Love Hurts

When I was six years old my parents bought me a tiny, cuddly hamster that I named Fuzzy. The lil' beige critter quickly captured my attention and my heart. I would giggle as he climbed up my sleeve and around my neck, even if his tiny padded feet were a bit scratchy.  It tickled me to watch Fuzzy's tiny pink tongue massage the nipple of his over-sized water bottle. Sprinting in his tiny hamster wheel, then slowing, then sprinting again--Fuzzy held me rapt in his miniature hamster world. He could hold so much food in his cheeks! Even his tiny hamster turds looked cute. In short, I loved Fuzzy. But not just a tiny bit; I loved him a lot. If any of you doubt that it is possible to love something to death and do not wish to be swayed from your opinion, read no further.


In an hour most grim I literally loved Fuzzy to death.

It started innocently enough. I loved to carry Fuzzy in my hands, you see. Mom would often remind me not to hold him too tight. But if I didn't, Fuzzy would get the best of me and scurry away. So hold him tight, I did. I would squeeze him to make sure he stayed safely in my control. This was fine until we noticed a tiny pink pouch hanging out of Fuzzy's butt. I didn't pay much attention to it and continued to love and squeeze my little best friend. A day passed. The pink butt pouch grew bigger. Then another day passed, the pouch bulging larger still. Mom grew alarmed and begged me to let him stay in his cage. But her pleas were in vain.

Rather than allowing me to squeeze the remains of what I believe to be Fuzzy's colon out of his butt, Mom declared a hamster emergency. Fuzzy was dying. Instead of throwing him over the backyard fence, or quickly whacking him with a 2 x 4, Mom took Fuzzy to the vet and paid to have him euthanized. Fuzzy's tiny life was over. I had loved him to death.


I put Fuzzy's tiny stiff body in a shoebox. His face was blank and his relatively enormous butt pouch had begun to shrivel. Tears were shed and a eulogy was spoken as we laid him in his final resting place--in the backyard, beneath one of the rusty legs of our swing set.


It would be a while before I was allowed another pet. But when I finally got a second hamster, he was promptly named Fuzzy and carried around constantly in my older and gentler, but no less caring hands. By the time I was ten I had raised and named five successive hamsters Fuzzy.


RIP my tiny little friends.






-The Flying Dutchman-