(Note: the picture at left is not Snickers. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an actual picture of Snickers that looked this good. But, you get the idea.)
Snickers was a good hamster. She lived almost two years, which is pretty old for a hamster. She bit my wife only once and peed on our daughter Maria and bit her only once, too. Snickers spent many hours running around the family room and kitchen in a clear plastic sphere. This allowed her to explore every horizontal surface on the main floor of our house and enjoy a good cardio workout every day without the danger that she might disappear behind the piano or underneath the sofa where it would be hard to extract her. If she had any fears or worries, she didn’t talk about them much. Sometimes after gently removing her from the cage for her workout, we would hold her tenderly and feed her a little snack. She would fill her cheeks with food until her head was nearly twice its normal size. Then she would gently burrow and snuggle into the folds in our clothing or the creases in the easy chair where we sat with her.
Her simple plastic and metal cage had two main levels. The bottom level contained her food, water, and exercise wheel. A clear plastic tube led to her upstairs “apartment,” a much more intimate space where she organized her bedding and took long naps.
Snickers was a constant reminder to us of the quotidian mysteries, the daily, ordinary, simple things that one must do to maintain a life: eat, drink, sleep, clean up after yourself, and play. We’ll miss Snickers and all the joy and wonder she brought into our home.
-- Pat Jones
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