Hamsters are the nastiest creatures in the universe. They are bad-tempered, antisocial little bastards. They also bite. Just saying.
Why am I saying this now? Well, my little sister got a little hamster for Christmas which is sporting all the virtues of hamsterhood listed above. The hamster's name is Hermione, because apparently it is a girl and Hermione is one of the less outdated names in Harry Potter. Her name is about her most child-friendly characteristic. Apart from that she's a typical hamster: sleeps all day, grumpy when you wake her up and if you dare touch her she either bites your fingers off or does something that looks very much like karate, but slightly faster and lying on her back. Whenever we take her out of the cage we use a glass to do it, because she finds its cold, impersonal surface more reassuring than the warm touch of humanity. Hamsters are loners. They simply don't like having other living creatures around. Plants they mind least, which is probably why they are vegetarians (hamsters, that is). Or perhaps they hate plants even more than proper living things and therefore prey on them, who knows. Hamsters only meet up about once a year, not to make love but to make other little hamsters. If you keep hamsters in captivity, you have to take the hamster kids away from their hamster mum, because otherwise she will eat them. Charming breed of rodent, aren't they?
However, Hermione is not only a bad-tempered, antisocial little bastard, she is also the cutest creature you've ever seen. Her fur is a golden brown colour and she looks out into the world with perfectly rounded unblinking black eyes. When she gets up on her back feet to take a look around or sticks her head out of her wee house, her short whiskers tremble ever so slightly and the tiny beast looks so loveable you just wanna give it a good cuddle and protect it from harm and neighbours' cats. You might have noticed me running out of adjectives denoting small size - that's how adorable she is!
I'm not saying all this because I think that hamsters should behave and be nice and cuddly. Not at all. It's not their fault they are like that. It's like demanding cacti that don't sting (but, those do exist, don't they?). What I'm saying is that it must be a terrible curse for the hamsters to be so ADORABLE. All they want is just to be left alone, but their outward appearance screams 'come on over and be friends with me'. In wild nature this sheer cuteness might have been a cunning strategy to deceive predators, but in human company it becomes a tragedy. It's a bit ironic really. I bet hamsters only became children's toys, because they look so loveable. Nobody cares about their character, which, to be fair, isn't loveable at all. Maybe there's a breed of leech out there, somewhere in a swamp perhaps, which has all the qualities hamsters lack: diurnal, patient, love-seeking, smiley and loyal, but - alas - black, icky and slippery. Poor, poor sociable leeches. Somebody must have switched their bodies and souls with those of the hamsters at some point.
Sometimes I feel a bit like a hamster myself. It's the sleeping-all-day part I like best.
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