In a series of unfortunate hamster events, it seems that Pinky is going bald.

As it turns out, small rodents make terrible pets.  

I realized this, when one of our microscopic hamsters was acting bizarrely on the day before we left for Hawaii--not really moving, making a weird squeaking noise, and generally looking like she was laboring to breathe.  I thought rodents were a safe bet, particularly after the death of our beloved beagle, and the way euthanizing her shook me to the VERY CORE.  My obsessive trolling of Facebook tells me that NO ONE really mourns a hamster, and so we entered into a *casual* ownership of two dwarf hamsters--and they were SO CUTE, but also deathly afraid of us, which was just further proof that our attachment to one another would be surface-level, at best.

I was correct.

Our contact was basically limited to picking them up and putting them in their ball.  For me, this felt like catching a mouse with my bare hands; for them, I can only assume it to be like an alien abduction.  Neither of these scenarios breeds an environment of unconditional love and trust, and so from the very start, it was, indeed, a doomed relationship.

And then there was that business of the one hammie eating the other hammie's ears off.  For a day, I was like, "WTF", and then we *won* a goldfish at the carnival, and pool season started, and then we lost our goggles, and I had bigger problems to deal with, and I moved on to issues that more relevantly impact my children getting into college, or staying off a stripper pole.  Hamster ears are not what I consider a major parenting issue--until the untimely demise of The Brain (hammie #1), whom I found at midnight, lying stiff in her cage.  This was a conundrum for several reasons:

It was midnight. {Duh.}

We were leaving for Hawaii in 7.5 hours.

We have experienced a drought this summer, rendering the soil in our yard like a hard slab of concrete that is unfit for burial.

We are renting our house, and I'm not sure that pet burial is in the lease, anyway.

Hamsters don't flush well.

Hamsters may not be left in a trash can, outside in 100+ degree heat, for an entire 8 days.

There is still a hamster ALIVE in the cage, and I have to believe that co-existing with a corpse is *not great*.

I woke Mike up kind of panicky, and he didn't see the problem here; and so I just let a dead hamster lie, and I went about my business of packing for Hawaii, because WHERE WAS I GONNA PUT IT, exactly?  In the morning, Mike extracted The Brain, put her in a shoe box and handed her off to my father-in-law for a proper burial in the woods surrounding their home.  A grave was dug later that day, and in a strange twist of events, their cat thought it was a liter box--and so The Brain was ultimately laid to rest, with a cat turd, while my children watched this all play out in fascination.  I can't make this stuff up, and you KNOW this about me, because I just sort of get myself into scenarios where these things happen, and I meet the Wu Tang Clan while working a summer retail job.

Since the "incident", Pinky, the other hamster, has been existing peacefully, without someone gnawing on her ears--I think, because mostly I forget that she's there, but the kids throw her popcorn on a regular basis, so RELAX PETA, she's being fed.  But my point here, is that hamsters are kind of brutal, and I suspect something terrible is about to happen, because Pinky now seems to be losing A LOT of her fur, and WTH does that mean?

We've had the hamsters for two years, which is essentially, their life expectancy; and this weekend, when we were forcing the geriatric and emotionally scarred Pinky into her ball, I noticed her tiny, tiny legs, which I have NEVER seen before.  But there they were, clear as day and gross as hell.  And I kind of assumed I just hadn't been paying attention, because I'm not very observant--until I went to check on the old girl today, and noticed two ENORMOUS bald patches on her 2 inch body.

I called Mike kind of panicky, and he didn't see a problem here, telling me that she's probably dying.  Which is where we had the conversation that miniature hamsters SUCK AS PETS, because they cost $8, but eventually they die--and NOT ALWAYS in your sleep, like I was COUNTING on, but right before your eyes while they wheeze, and squeak, and lose all their hair.  And you can't take them to the vet, because WHAT THE HELL are they going to do for a MINIATURE rodent; and also because the cost of a vet exam is worth, like, 15 hamsters and so this doesn't make any sense on a much larger, economic scale.  

I'm not sure what I am trying to tell you here, except that stupid Facebook never mentioned that sometimes these things don't just drop dead and evaporate.  SOMETIMES, you just watch them go bald and try to figure out what that means, exactly, and how it will affect my children's worldview and inadvertently lead to  recreational drug usage as teenagers. 

And if you think that sounds CRAZY, then explain to me how I ended up with the logo of a sushi restaurant chain on my lower back--because I'm pretty sure I can trace that sh#! back to childhood.