animal farm

Meet Wesley [L] and Laverne [R]

The girls hanging out with the rabbits in Dad's workshop

In case you're in doubt as to whether or not I've officially lost all my [remaining] marbles and gotten more pets for the kids, please rest assured that we are only babysitting Wesley and Laverne!

Animal surprise #1. Here's the deal: Friday night Owen and I decided to get Japanese takeout from our favorite place. Once we'd settled down with our spicy shrimp rolls, miso soup, and teriyaki salmon, we put in a movie that Owen had rented. Now, when Owen rents movies, chances are that I'm only interested in about, oh, say one out of every five that he brings home. He'll watch just about anything within our rating parameters, but I'm a bit picky about movies. I guess I'd just rather read than spend time watching something I'm not that into. Tonight's Blockbuster pick was "Deja Vu" with Denzel. From what I'd remembered from previews and from looking at the DVD case, it looked like another exploding-cars/shoot-em-up type movie. So not my thing. I had already decided [to myself] that after I had finished dinner, I would just bring my book in and read on the couch by Owen as he watched the movie. A good compromise. But the movie took a different turn than I expected and I found that I was actually enjoying it.

So, we're watching Denzel in action when at 9:30 the phone rings. Someone in the ward was calling to see if we could take in a couple of box-trained house rabbits that night. A family in our ward had to move out of their apartment because they found black mold in the wall. Owen says that we can do it, and after he gets off the phone, we look at each other. Box trained house rabbits? Do we know what we're doing? Owen then explains to me that they also have a "playpen" that can be set up, and we decide to set the rabbits up in the laundry room in the playpen. The husband can't meet Owen to turn over the rabbits until he gets off work, so at 11:30 pm Owen goes over there to pick up the rabbits. We set them up in the laundry room, but when we realize that this setup basically renders the laundry room useless, we decide to move them out into Owen's shop for a week or two. So far that seems to be working out well. As you can imagine, our kids were thrilled to wake up Saturday morning to find two rabbits in the house! They're helping to feed and water them, pet them, and brush their fur. It's all very exciting.

Animal surprise #2. That same Saturday morning, after we had moved Wesley and Laverne out to the shop, Julia was in the laundry room where we keep her hamster cage. I was on the phone when she rushed up to me and exclaimed that there was a worm in Mini's cage. Still on the phone, I go in to investigate. Sure enough, there is something pink and squiggly in Mini's cage. But it's not a worm. I quickly hurry Julia from the room and close the door, explaining that we'll worry about it in a minute. Because I was having a "duh" moment. For weeks we had watched Mini get rounder and plumper. I just thought she was hitting the hamster food really hard and was growing. Alas, no. Mini was preggers!

I immediately put Oreo into his own little cage away from the mother and babies and got on the internet to find out all about hamster babies. I continued to check on Mini [while keeping everyone else out] because in my reading I learned that stressed hamster mothers often eat their young. You should have seen the look on the girls' faces when I told them that! [Let that be a lesson to my kids-if you stress me out too much, I might salt and pepper you and have you for lunch!] I had counted seven babies by that afternoon, but I noticed later that evening that I wasn't seeing as many. By Sunday morning she was down to two babies, and they seem to be thriving. I think that seven may have just been to much for her to cope with as a young, first-time mother. I can't really blame her. At least we never saw her actually, uh, getting rid of them. I don't think I could have handled that. And I pretty much kept the kids away because I didn't think they'd like to see it, either.

See that little pink blob, about the size of an uncracked peanut? Hamster baby!

So, according to my research and if all continues to go well, in about 5 weeks we will have two little hamsters needing good homes. Free hamsters, anyone?