George Lagos
Period-3
3/9/97
The Hamster
"Is it dead? What happened!" I said as I rolled my
sister's hamster around in it's
little cage. It was a Sunday evening when I said these
words, I was all alone, and I was
very
confused. I didn't know what I was going
to do at that point. The only person who
I could talk to
and help me out in this situation was a friend that I had been talking to for a
few minutes. My friend also did not know what I should do.
I poked the poor creature
several times to
see if it still had any life left in it.
Instead of waking up and moving about
its cage, the
hamster lay there motionless, like a little stuffed animal. I sat there in the
living room,
talking on the phone, and examining the hamster's cage. My little sister's
hamster had died
while it was under my care.
My parents had gone to San Fransisco for the
weekend, and instead of staying at
my grandparents'
house like my parents recommended, I decided to stay at home. Both of
my sisters went
to my grandparents' house, so I had the whole house to myself. I even
had some
company: my sister's hamster. I was the hamster's sole caretaker. Without
me, it would
starve, die of thirst, or somehow find a way to escape the confines of its
little
cage and wreak
havoc throughout my parents' house.
Because I've never taken care of a
hamster before,
my sister had to tell me how I was to take care of her hamster. I was to
feed it, make
sure there was plenty of water, play with it, and give it some exercise by
putting it inside
of a plastic ball and let it run around inside of it for exercise Simple, or so
I thought...
The first day went smoothly, and the hamster
was doing its hamster thing: eating,
drinking, and
running like crazy inside of its hamster wheel.
At certain times of the day I
would put the
hamster in the little plastic ball so that it could run around freely. While the
hamster did this,
I would watch TV, eat a snack, or talk on the phone with a friend, as the
little hamster ball
ran into walls. After several bags of
chips and a pizza, the first day had
passed without
any problems, and I went to sleep.
The next day I woke up and headed upstairs to
the kitchen to eat some breakfast.
After a tasty
bowl of Trix, I headed over to the hamster cage. As I peered inside, I
noticed that the
hamster wasn't moving. I observed the
hamster for a few minutes, and
then I decided
that the hamster was asleep. I put some
food in the cage, checked the
water, and went
about my business until it was time for me to go to sleep.
On the third and last day of my freedom from my
family, I did what I usually
would do on the
previous two days: I got up, ate
breakfast, and walked to the hamster
cage. As I observed the hamster again, using my
great powers of deduction, I found the
truth: The hamster was dead. At first I didn't believe it. I began to go into a small state
of panic. There were questions running through my mind
that I could not answer at that
specific moment
in time. "Is it dead?"
"What will my sister say?" "Will my sister ever
trust
me?" I was scared. I didn't know why I was scared, or how I was
going to deal
with my sister in
the immediate future. The worst of my
hamster experience happened
very quickly
after I discovered the dead hamster. The
phone call. Uh oh...
Shortly after the hamster's death, my mom
called, and asked me how everything
was going. Unfortunately, she asked me about the
hamster, so I decided to tell the truth
instead of making
up some excuse. My mom wasn't very
surprised, and she told me to
get rid of the
hamster, so I buried it. I was really
pissed and very sad. I think that I was
also scared
because I was going to have to tell my little sister what had happened. In fact,
shortly after I
buried the little guy, my sister called me from our grandparents' house. The
very first thing
that she asked me was, "How's my hamster?" Those words hit me like an
uppercut, and I
didn't know what I was going to say.
After about five minutes of saying,
"Uh, I don't
know, uh, how is everything," I decided to tell her the truth. At first she
thought that I
was kidding, and she hung up right after I told her. My grandmother called
me to ask if I
was playing some mean practical joke, but I told her that I was serious. I
could hear my
sister in the background crying as my grandmother bothered me with
questions.
Even though I had told the truth and the worst
of the situation was over, an
alternate plan
was working through my mind. I could
have lied about the hamster, stalled
for time, and
bought a hamster that would have resemble the decease hamster, but I had
no way to get to
a pet shop. I also decided against this
plan because I didn't want to warp
my little
sister's sense of reality into thinking that living things don't die, but live
on
forever. No, that wouldn't have been the solution, and
even if I successfully did it, I
wouldn't have
felt good about myself. I knew that my
sister would get over the hamster's
death eventually,
and she did. In fact, she got over it
quickly. She even bought another
hamster. Oh boy...
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