Marshall's near death experience

It's been awhile since I blogged about my hampster, so I thought I would update you on Marshall.

In case you missed it, I got a dwarf hampster a little more than three years ago. And I like him a lot. I'm not exactly a pet kind of person, most of the time. As I said once before, I tried goldfish, and after killing four of them in as many weeks, I gave up on pets, until I got Marshall, my dwarf hampster. He pretty much rocks, up to the point that he's low maintenance, and doesn't bite. Despite the fact that I love my hampster, I am not the kind of person that gets super attached to my pets. When I have a dog, someday, and he gets some kind of awful disease that needs surgery and medication that costs more than my car, I'm not going to do it. I love animals, but they aren't human... sorry...

So anyway, back to Marshall. Dwarf hampsters, according to my research, live to 2.5 to 3 years old. Marshall turned 3 back in February. So I've been pretty much been expecting Marshall's demise just about any day now. A couple weeks ago, I was getting ready for bed, and I realized I hadn't heard from Marshall all night. You see, usually, hampsters run on their wheels all night, since they are nocturnal animals... they can run up to 8 miles in a 24 hour period. So this one night, I'm already in bed, reading, and I'm getting ready to turn off the light. And I suddenly realize I haven't heard his squeaky wheel all night. No noise. I turned off the light and laid there for a little while, waiting. Still, nothing. So I figured Marshall had died. And I was a little bit sad.

Since I'm a lazy person, by nature, I decided I would deal with it in the morning. I spent at least 30 minutes thinking about it, before finally falling asleep. And then I dreamed about Marshall being dead too. I dreamt about his funeral, and how I'd deal with his body, which turns out to be kind of problematic, since I don't have a yard, and my really good friend, Kristen, who does love animals as if they were people, would have to come, and she would not be okay with a shoebox in the dumpster.

So I get up in the morning, having thought about Marshall, pretty much all night. I get ready for work, make my lunch, and do just about everything else i can before going to deal with Marshall's little body. Then, once I had nothing else to do, I grabbed a ziploc baggie and opened Marshall's cage. I picked up the plastic house he sleeps in, ready to take care of business.

It turns out that Marshall was not dead at all... but just taking a break from excercise.

...and now, Marshall is setting a record for the oldest dwarf hampster...