June 27, 2000
q-squared

The great tragedy of dwarf hamsters is that in addition to their charm and miniature size, they are likewise cursed with minute craniums capable of holding only the smallest of pea-sized brains.

Near the end of 1998, alone in San Francisco and estranged from the person who had inspired my move to the City to begin with, I conceived a sudden, demanding need for companionship of some sort. Quibble was the first acquisition, a newborn Siberian dwarf hamster with convictions of godhood. He eyed his new cage with a dubious eye, comparing it unfavorably with his previous place of residence, a giant glass aquarium that held two pounds of sawdust and twenty-seven of his brothers and sisters. During the first five days, he buried himself under the bedding and only emerged to glower at me and occasionally stuff seeds into his cheeks.

The next acquisition was a new roommate, the Marshmallow Peep. But that's another story.

Over the winter holidays I returned home to Seattle, leaving the apartment to the Marshmallow Peep, who was moving in, and Quibble, who became quickly convinced that the Marshmallow Peep was a rabid dwarf-hamster-eating predator, despite her anxious attendence on his every fuzzy need. He greeted my return with shrill relief, wrapping himself around the bars of his cage and hopping up and down in an attempt to reach me. From pint-sized deity, he turned into pint-sized worshipper, and bowed down at my altar with hosannas and burnt offerings.

Shortly after my return, a friend and I wandered past a pet store in Chinatown and bought another dwarf hamster. The new one was fat, placid, and undisturbed by his change of residence. Quibble was baffled by his new roommate, as his short memory precluded retaining any information on others of his kind; a few decisive encounters served to determine that Quirk, the new hamster, was Quibble's superior in size and muscle, if not brain.

One night after eating a makeshift dinner of rice, fried egg, soy sauce, and bacon, all diced up together in a cholesterol-rich mess, I fell asleep on the couch at an obscenely early hour. When I came to myself, my roommate had turned off all the lights, settled me comfortably on the couch, and was getting ready to go to bed herself. 10:30.

I brushed my teeth, changed my clothes, then fell into bed. At three a.m., I was suddenly awakened by squeaking from the hamsters. It was quite loud. It was also quite long-lived; after about ten minutes of World War Dwarf Hamster One, I dragged myself up, turned on the light, and went to investigate. Quirk was beating up on Quibble. Or trying to mate with him. Or her. The gender of the hamsters had been a mystery from the beginning; their aggression, according to the online help pages, were more indicative of females, although their behavior seemed to indicate more masculine qualities to my roommate and me. Annoyed by the noise, I reached in and knocked Quirk off of Quibble a number of times. The Hand of God reaching down from on high failed to make any noticeable impact on the rabid dwarf hamster mentality. After a few minutes, sleepily irritated, I finally ended up pounding on Quirk with the little wire ladder leading to the second level of their cage. Aggravated by the interruption, tubby Quirk attempted to squash his way through the railing, and waved his little paws at Quibble. Squeak squeak squeak squeak.

It was an educational episode. It would seem that the way that dwarf hamsters fight, (or mate; again, one don't know much about dwarf hamster mating rituals so one can only conjecture), is that the less dominant hamster rolls over, presents its stomach, and then proceeds to scream as loudly as it can while the dominant hamster jumps up and sits on it.

It could have been fighting, or it could have been mating. There was no way to tell the difference. Either/or.

Ten minutes later, the two fell quiet just long enough for me to turn off the lights and crawl back into bed. Two minutes after I'd pulled the covers up to my chin...

"SQUEEEEEEEEK!"

Once more I dragged myself out to kick some hamster ass. They were absolutely determined to quarrel so after a futile five or ten minutes of trying to separate them, I finally just picked Quibble up and stuffed him into his little nest at the top of the second story, then removed the ladder so Quirk couldn't climb up and get at him. The theory went that any sane animal with an instinct for self-preservation would consider this a rescue, and would remain in relative safety on the second level where the bully couldn't reach him.

This turned out to be an unfortunate error in judgement. The minute size of the dwarf hamster brain precludes the inclusion of self-preservative instincts and sanity in the dwarf hamster makeup. The second I got back into bed again, Quibble hurled his fuzzy little self off the second story and proceeded to get pummeled yet again. In a superbly Douglas Adams fashion, the closest it could come to self-protection was to squash itself under the treadmill wheel and squeeze its little eyes shut. If I can't see Quirk, Quibble was doubtless thinking, Quirk can't see me. The sad thing is, sometimes that worked.

Out of desperation, I dropped handfuls of food into their bowl, which broke up the fight long enough for them to crawl into the bowl and stuff their cheeks. Fight over, at least; there was relative quiet, long enough for me to once more snap off the lights and crawl into bed. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Then, just as I started really getting comfortable and drifting off---

By then, it was 4:30. I had to get up at 7:30. Thank God I'd gone to bed early. I reached into the cage, picked up Quirk, and stuffed him into a convenient shoebox. I poked some holes in the lid, closed it, then yelled at him for a solid five minutes while Quibble watched me and the shoebox with shiny black eyes through the bars of the cage. After about half an hour, hearing Quirk scrabbling piteously around in the shoebox, I again dragged myself out of bed. I opened the box and found the fat ball gaping up at me. "Have you learned your lesson?" I demanded. Quirk snuffled. I took that as a token of contrition and let him back into the cage.

I went back to bed. Two minutes later, Quirk and Quibble escalated their little war to sawdust hurling and shrieks fit to wake the dead.

This time I didn't even bother with the scolding. I fished out Quirk and stuffed him back in the box, closed the lid, and fastened it shut with a book. Quibble watched the process with great interest. "You're a bastard," I told Quirk, and put him on the floor under the cage. For good measure, I told Quibble, "You are too," snapped off the lights, and went back to sleep.

At no time did either of them even try to bite me, even when I kept knocking Quirk off of Quibble with my fingers. It is quite probable that they didn't have room in their tiny, itty bitty brains for the squabble and finger-biting to take place simultaneously. When I initially bought the pair, they used to nip me all the time and look puzzled when I swatted them for it. Cause and effect is likely a prefrontal lobe thing.

The next morning when I woke up, I checked in on Quirk and found him still sniffling at the bottom of the shoebox. I said a firm, "I told you so," and let him back into the cage before going to the bathroom for a shower. I came back dripping wet with a towel turbaned around my head, and found Quirk once more bouncing on top of a screaming Quibble. I gave up at that point. Why bother? There were bits and pieces of sawdust left at the bottom of the shoebox I'd used, so I dumped that out over the cage to rain down on the pair. It would seem that raining sawdust is a regular occurance in the dwarf hamster universe; they paid very little attention. What they did notice was an old care-and-fabric tag that had come attached to some shirt or another that had fallen into the shoebox and, subsequently, into the cage. They broke off their fight long enough to sniff at it. Quibble apparently found it of great interest; he picked it up in his mouth and ran around the cage with it seven or eight times. I watched, then went to dry off and dress myself. When I wandered back to the cage to investigate further, Quibble was still running happily around the cage with the tag in his mouth, while Quirk sat in the center of the cage, licking things.

I replaced the ladder to the second story. After a few tries, Quibble finally made his way up to his little nest, where he promptly added the tag to his growing pile of Important Things.

They went back to wrestling before I left. I could hear them squeaking. Sawdust was flying everywhere. Stupid little dustballs.