Today is my housemate Rosie’s 21st Birthday and several days ago I thought of a great gift for her. She’d previously wanted a dog, but as we are both allergic and they’d need a lot of looking after, we decided it wasn’t the best thing. I obviously told her me, Graeme and Phil knew exactly what we were getting for her, just to tease her. She spent ages trying to guess, and after some sel-proclaimed amazing acting, I dragged her away from the scent of a pet.
Then today, Graeme, Phil and I got in the car and started driving in the general direction of Stockport, which has the nearest Pets at Home store. For some reason, Phil decided to change his Sat-Nav voice to German, resulting in quite a few wrong turns and general failure to drive 4 miles down the road.
Eventually we got there and wandered around looking at geckos, ugly fish, lazy rabbits eventually settling on a Russian Dwarf hamster. Instantly looking into the cage we noticed one out of the group. He was getting himself comfy lying on top of what I assume were his brothers and sisters and we figured ‘If that little bugger already knows how to form a pyramid, he’ll fit right in…’
So we packed him in his little box, grabbed some bedding and a cage and figured it’d be around £10-15 each when all totalled up. Although after the cashier tilled everything up, it only came to £16? We walked off quite quickly hoping we wouldn’t get called back and got into the car and drove off. Turns out we didn’t pay for most of the stuff we got, including the largest item, the bright orange cage that held everything inside.
The drive home was possibly the slowest and most apologetic drive I’ve ever been on. Every road bump, pothole, sharp turn we took was followed by a timid apology towards the box containing our new recruit. I’m sure he could’ve taken a little bit more speed, but we didn’t want to risk getting him home and realising we’d have to drive all the way back and ask for a new hamster, especially after Italian Jobbing the cage and toys.
We called Rosie to come see her gift and she was literally over the moon. She instantly bonded with him and defended all our immature threats that we were going to eat him or set him free. She even hated the name we’d chose for him, Vladimire (he’s a Russian Dwarf hamster remember?) and decided his name is now Oskar. So here he is, the new tenant at Casa Del Punx, Oskar…
This little bastard is fast and didn’t mess around with learning the layout of his new home. So you’re only getting two quick snaps.
x
