It’s not the first time Ivan has identified with our rodent friends. He has always been fascinated with our hamsters:

He noted, for example, that hamsters line their beds with toilet paper.

Here’s Crenguța in bed:

And Valentina:

And Lucian:

Of course, Ivan followed suit:

Now that we’ve switched to guinea pigs, Ivan is having identity issues again. This time, he’s gone a bit further:

Matt described the event: “The pigs actually weren’t very disturbed when Ivan climbed in there, so I didn’t worry about them too much (Chuy actually likes Ivan quite a bit, and will follow him around), but about 30 minutes later, the fact that they’d shared naptime with a cat seemed to have sunk in, and they were a little retroactively freaked out, requiring lots of cilantro and fresh hay to compensate for. . . . ”

Apparently, there was some hay-eating on Ivan’s part too.

Matt and I thought we came up with the cleverest game ever to play with a hamster.

We thought the hamsters would play along.

Hamsters really like to make nests out of tissue paper; my hamsters get a wad of toilet paper a week to build their nest; thus, we concluded, a whole roll of toilet paper would be a dream come true to a hamster.

We thought we would document the daily unraveling of the toilet paper roll and that the hamster would fill up the cage with scrunched up bits of toilet paper.

It would have been so cute.

Last January, when Crenguța still lived, we awarded her with a whole roll:

She tore off a bit of toilet paper. Then she stopped.

You can see the nest in the top left corner. (All the black oblong shapes are hamster poops.)

This is as big as her nest ever got:

This January, we decided to replicate the experiment with Lucian.

After a week, here’s what his cage looks like:

The little guy only took what he needed. In fact, less than he needed. He built up the rest of his nest with the newspaper that lines his cage.

The hamsters’ lack of a sense of fun leaves me disappointed in their kind. It may be a generalization, but I suspect the entire species of being no fun.

Where’s the wanton greed? Where’s the unfettered extravagance?

Hamsters have a lot to learn from humans.

Here’s something to keep in mind, hamsters of the world:

Each American [human] will consume 700,000 kilograms (1.5 million lbs.) of minerals (mostly sand and gravel), and 24 billion BTUs of energy — equivalent to 4000 barrels of oil (40% in petroleum products, 25% each in natural gas and coal). In a lifetime, an average American [human] will eat 25,000 kilograms (55,000 lbs.) of plant foods (20% each in vegetables, sweeteners, fruits & juices, grains, and other plant products) and 28,000 kilograms (60,000 lbs.) of animal products (70% milk, 7% each beef, chicken and pork), provided in part by slaughtering 2000 animals (>90% poultry).*

Hamsters, you only have, on average, a two-year lifespan vs. a human’s 70-80 years. I highly doubt you’re even close to a two-year-old human’s consumption levels.

Yeah, sure, you are eating your way to that 25,000 kg of plant foods, but have you stopped to think about how close you are to slaughtering your allotted 2000 animals? I haven’t seen any hamsters lately sinking their teeth into any fat juicy steaks.

And how about those forests? Sheesh, you’re making us humans do all the work in destroying them. Can’t you at least do your part? A whole roll of toilet paper and you’re like, what, saving it for something?

Waste already! It’s so much fun! That’s why we live in a free country! We can do whatever we —

Hey! Punk! I’m talking to you! Are you even listening?

Aww, screw it!

He went to sleep.

*From “The Environmental Consequences of Having a Baby in the United States”, via Dave Pollard, himself via Darren Barefoot.

Above: My former, very much feral hamster, Crenguţă.

Matt found this passage in David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest (page 93):

It’s a herd of feral hamsters, a major herd, thundering across the yellow plains of the southern reachs of the Great Concavity in what used to be Vermont, raising dust that forms a uremic-hued cloud with somatic shapes interpretable from as far away as Boston and Montreal. The herd is descended from two domestic hamsters set free by a Waterton NY boy at the beginning of the Experialist migration in the subsidized Year of the Whopper. The boy now attends college at Champaign IL and has forgotten that his hamsters were named Ward and June.

The noise of the herd is tornadic, locomotival. The expression on the hamsters’ whiskered faces is businesslike and implacable - it’s that implacable-herd expression. They thunder eastward across pedalferrous terrain that today is fallow, denuded. To the eat, dimmed by the fulvous cloud the hamsters send up, is the vivid verdant ragged outline of the annularly overfertilized forests of what used to be central Maine.

All these territories are now property of Canada.

With respect to a herd of this size, please exercise the sort of common sense that come to think of it would keep your thinking man out of the southwest Concavity anyway. Feral hamsters are not pets. They mean business. Wide berth advised. Carry nothing even remotely vegetablish if in the path of a feral herd. If in the path of such a herd, move quickly and calmly in a direction perpendicular to their own. If American, north is not advisable. Move south, calmly and in all haste, toward some border metropolis - Rome NNY or Glen Falls NNY or Beverly MA, say, or those bordered points between them at which the giant protective ATHSCME fans atop the hugely convex protective walls of anodized Lucite hold off the drooling and piss-colored [sic] bank of teratogenic Concavity clouds and move the bank well back, north, away, jaggedly, over your protected head.

Matt is already on page 103 and says tha hamsters have not returned.

Meanwhile, here’s Lucian trying to look feral: