Actually, let's do that in reverse. Let's start with the recap of recent events and then move into the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hamster story.
CC went to Manila a few weeks back and spent 10 days there. While she was away, I pretty much had no time to devote to anything other than work. First was work at the salon, then work at home. CC does a lot of those household chores too you see and with her gone, I had to do them. That week was mostly uneventful except for the addition of my new hamster, Keiko. She's a dwarf, Siberian female and just the CUTEST little thing. I'd spent at least a week at the store carrying her around when I wasn't busy and eventually decided I'd buy her. In her habitat at work, she was one of the few that didn't bite everything that came through the cage door, which was a plus.
As you can see, she enjoys playing Gameboy and is learning very quickly :-)
Here, she's just watching me type the blog, making sure I say good things about her.Anyway, she was the first addition to the family. A week after I brought her home, my mother gave me two parakeets, cage and all. They're both fairly well behaved but neither of them are what you'd call "people parakeets." They've just never been trained to relax around us. Not to worry though, I'll work on them when I have the time.
If you're keeping score, right now I've got two dogs, a BUNCH of fish, a turtle, two parakeets and two hamsters. That's right, not a typo, I said TWO hamsters. But I'll get to that a little later.
So, all these animals. I must say, I do enjoy having them around. It's almost like having my own little zoo :-)
The next item on the list is the monitor. My old one died. I was sitting here browsing the Internet when the screen just went black. No warning, just GONE. I checked the connections, checked the settings, nothing. It didn't even give me the "No signal" warning. That was the first thing that made me suspicious. Then I tried to get the on screen display to come up. That should work as long as the monitor has power. Nothing. Totally blank screen. Gone. Dead. Fried. This happened to me 3 pm on a Sunday. Had no choice. Had to replace it. With no monitor, a computer is really just taking up space.
Fortunately, there were several monitors on sale around town and I managed to get a good deal on a 19 inch flat panel monitor. At first I wasn't too thrilled with having to spend on yet another bit of equipment. And when I put the new monitor in its place, I was thinking it was WAY too big. Then I turned it on and got a look at it in action. DAMN! Never had a picture this crisp before! And the monitor is so big I don't have to maximize the browser window to see everything. That makes multi-tasking a WHOLE lot easier!
This past week, on Monday, CC came home, which is good. However, my boss, the grooming manager, aka our ONLY groomer at the moment, went on a short vacation. What does that all mean? Means I had to work a 6-day week last week and I had to go in early on Monday to make sure I was off in time to pick CC up at the airport. I rounded this week off by going to a wedding Saturday night (which meant I had to take another morning shift). Needless to say, last night I was pretty beat. Washed 11 dogs during my Saturday shift, clipped nails on so many dogs I'm now a canine pedicure specialist. I even painted the toenails of two greyhounds.
Which brings me to today. First day of my two-day weekend. WOO HOO! Went to the mall. Went shopping! Well see, CC left some of her bath gels in Manila because they were running a bit low and her family liked them. Had to replace those, right? :-) And there was a sale on hand soap. Couldn't pass THAT up! Then there was the store that was moving. Everything half off! And the buy one, get one half off sale on t-shirts. I conservatively estimate that we saved nearly FIFTY DOLLARS today! Don't ask how much we spent. That's really not relavent is it? :-)
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Now, the story you've been waiting for. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hamster. Keiko, you've seen pictures of her. Cute little thing but do NOT mess with her! Female hamsters are pretty aggressive when it comes to defending their territory. I found out just HOW aggressive earlier this past week.
Customer came into the store to return a hamster. I don't know why it was returned, probably didn't get along with the one they had or something like that. Point is, nothing wrong with the hamster, perfectly healthy and all. Thing is, we can't put a returned animal back on the sales floor without a vet check. Have to make sure they're healthy you see. Here's the problem, a hamster sells for around 10 dollars. We'd take a pretty big loss getting the vet check and only selling the hamster for 10 bucks. In cases like that, we tend to adopt them out. First crack goes to people who work at the store. Free pet. After that, they go to trusted regular customers that we know have or are looking for similar animals. Well, guess who fell into BOTH of those categories? You got it.
I'm sitting at my counter. The shift is almost over. Nothing to do. I'm just killing time until closing. In comes the manager with a box. She puts it on the counter and tilts it over and I'm thinking, "Whatever comes out of there, it better damn well not slither or have more than 4 legs." Instead, out comes this really cute, black and white hamster. CC will be putting up pictures on her site soon.
So, Mary, the manager, explains the situation and asks if I'll adopt this one. Well, he was so cute, of COURSE I would. I didn't figure there'd be any problem. Keiko's cage is big enough for two and hamsters aren't really that aggressive towards members of the opposite sex. If they were, there wouldn't be any baby hamsters would there? In fact, our information sheets state quite plainly that they're social, but solitary. They prefer to be alone and have their own little corners but otherwise, they get along fine. You just have to be careful when you put females together.
New hamster comes home (he doesn't yet have a name). I put him in the cage with Keiko and DAMN does she go all Crouching Tiger on him. He was just being nice, walking up to her, wiggling his nose, that sort of thing and she'd just unleash a volly of face slaps until he ran off. THEN she started to set up ambushes. She'd burry herself under the bedding or hide behind the play wheel, wait until he came close enough then she'd SPRING out and start slapping at him, which would usually send HIM flying. One time she surprised him SO much that he ended up on the other side of the cage, on his back.
Yeah, it was at that point I decided I'd better pick up a cheap cage at work, which is what I did. So now we've got the two of them. They're both cute, though he tends to bite a little at first. Keiko spent a week walking around the store with me so she's used to being handled. He's still getting over the initial shock.
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Just a few odds and ends here. I've put video back on the site. CC found a new source with a much larger selection. The one I have up now is just plain funny (to everyone but the girl of course). It really demonstrates just how persistant polar bears are when they think there's food nearby.
Also, in a previous post I pasted a bit from a Wall Street Journal article on a Filipino judge. Turns out he's got a blog here at blogspot and he posted a comment. You can check them both out by scrolling down and viewing the comments under the original post.
That pretty much brings us up to date. I'll be posting more often now that I have some spare time again.
Enjoy!
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