Our First Pet...

Many people express great surprise at our lack of desire for children. Many try and convince us we will, 'one day'... A kind mother of one of my students said we should 'at least try', we might like it. This made me laugh, there is no 'try' with children, there is do or don't. You can't say 'well, I tried, I don't like it, can you take it back?'

Those who know us well know that all we really want is a dog. Sadly dogs can be even trickier than children to look after, and before I cause uproar with this statement I need to point out that we travel. A lot. A dog is not quite as easy to take on a plane or find a bed for. What makes it worse is that in Morocco dogs are seen as dirty; many people don't even want to touch them, let alone have them in their house. A dog in a house is said to invite in evil spirits. We're not going to find too many volunteers to dog sit for us here.

It is for this reason that we have never had a pet. Apart from the odd gecko that is. In school this semester my class is doing the living environment. We went through two weeks of having birds, reptiles, fish, insects and molluscs brought into the class by one young boy who is a definite David Attenborough in the making and who happens to have very understanding parents that open their house to an incredible range of animals. What he lacked though was a mammal that was calm enough for class handling; his dog wees on the floor when stressed, something I didn't really fancy, not even for the noble purpose of science education. It was this dilemma that got me thinking about getting a class pet.

After much deliberation about animals kept in cages and the need for two for company, we got a white male Syrian Hamster. Thankfully they are territorial and need to be kept alone. I had visions of, hamster novice that I am, mistakenly putting a boy and a girl together and then ending up with a much bigger science education lesson than planned. We had bought a cage for him from Spain the weekend before he arrived, and when he was brought into school by my budding David Attenborough in a water jug I was rather perturbed. Not only was he far bigger than I expected, far too big for the cage, he was long and ratty looking; white with red eyes, and he stank of wee. This was not the cute addition to the class I had anticipated. 

With a few adaptations to the cage (I had to make a ladder out of BBQ skewers as he was too big for the hole to get on the slide), our hamster soon settled into his small but cosy cage. I asked the students to think of a name and write on papers to be picked out of a hat. When I pulled out 'Snowy' three kids simultaneously shouted “Yay, that's mine!”. They then continued to bicker about who actually got to name him all the way to computer class, but Snowy it was.

To my surprise hamsters sleep all day and party all night. Our new class pet likes to bury himself so deep in a bed of white tissue that you don't even know he is in the cage. He wakes up about 8.00 in the evening and then is well and truly partied out by the time the kids get in to school in the morning. If he is seen during the day it is only to sleepwalk to his water or fall asleep in a corner with food in his hands. When woken by overexcited children, or more likely their teacher, he opens one sleepy eye and then the other to peer at you, unamused, before going back to sleep.

I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed with our acquisition. This was not the educational interaction that I had intended. Saying that he gave himself a good bath and we all quickly got attached to our sleepy little friend. So attached that when the first weekend came I found I couldn't bear to leave him all alone in school. I carried him home in his cage wrapped in a jacket through blisteringly cold wind, talking to him all the way to keep him calm. If anyone one else was brave enough to face the weather they would have thought I was nuts.

 It was only during this first weekend, when I went to a friend's and came home at 1.00 in the morning, I saw that our boring little mammal had morphed into a frantic overeager gymnast. I now know that hamsters sleep most of the day and spend most of the night hanging upside down on the bars at the top of their cage, well at least that's what ours does. This frenetic energy made us go out and get him a cage twice the size, where he can now spend hours running in his wheel or doing cliff-hanger impressions of the top of the cage. Our boring little hamster is actually full of character and is more addictive to watch than the TV. You find yourself having to rewind things you have missed while watching him clown around, chatter for your attention or walk around bumping into things with a cheek bulging at odd angles, stuffed with an over sized piece of carrot. After that first weekend trip home we have found that we can't leave him in school on his own each night to perform his tricks to an empty room. He gets carried back and forth in his second home each morning and afternoon. At home the three of us have a sofa each to watch TV from. He is becoming a very spoilt little hamster.

Being a pet owner for the first time has not been stress-free. It was only after a week of having him and then doing some internet checking that I found out that we had been caring for him all wrong. This distressed me greatly, 'had I scarred him for life?', would he ever recover from our over exuberant handling? When he woke up after one particularly deep sleep his eyes were all wonky... Thinking I best be pro-active, I did the stupid thing of Googling it and found our hamster was probably dying. Obviously the same applies for hamsters and self internet diagnosis as does for humans. Why had I never appreciated how difficult animal care was? It seems that at every turn there was a chance I could kill our precious little man. When Nick came to me during a party we were having at ours and said quietly 'I have just thrown the hamster across the room", explaining that it had clamped its teeth into his finger which he quickly yanked away, inadvertently sending Snowy flying. Like any blinkered parent I found myself making excuses for his out of character behaviour... he was stressed by the noise, all the people unnerved him. The worst thing was that as well as being shocked by the fact that there was blood everywhere, I was somewhat relieved that it was Nick's. It is so much easier to patch up a finger than a hamster.

As for keeping animals in cages... I’m still not sure. But I know that if we didn't have him some kid in town would have him in a small and probably dirty cage judging on how the majority of people care for animals out here. With us he is clean, safe and entertained. Surely that's got to count for something? If we were to just let him go he would either freeze or get eaten by a kestrel.

But now we are back to that old concern....the holidays... who gets the class pet? One parent has suggested we put him in the freezer to see if he hibernates.

I wonder how easy it would be to pack him in a suitcase.