Redemption and Remorse

Once upon a time, there was a baby hamster named Radagast.

You may remember him from when I got him like three weeks ago. 

This story is about Radagast, as previously stated. 

Once upon a time there was a baby hamster named Radagast, and he liked to live life on the edge.

He was always super adorable even when he bit people all the frigging time.

He was the most bravest hamster in all the land, and apparently also possessed Spider Hamster* powers.

*he couldn't really swing from webs, but he climbed to great heights against the forces of nature.

He had a weird habit of pulling all the food out of his food dispenser, hiding it in random locations around his cage, and then crawling around and stuffing it all into his face.

And I mean... like... all of it.

If you think that picture is an exaggeration, here is a real life actual picture of him doing it.

If you look reeeeeally closely, you can see how super duper fat his cheeks are from stuffing so much food in.

And yes, that is a toilet paper roll in the background. Once upon a time there was a baby hamster named Radagast and his favorite toy was a toilet paper tube. He made forts and tunnels with it.

His other favorite game was jumping between the upper levels of his cage like some sort of tiny furry daredevil. 

To illustrate to you the daredevility of his stunts, here is a picture of his house:

He started up getting from red shelf to red shelf by running across the top of the wheel, but eventually graduated up to just jumping the gap.

One day, Radagast was home alone and had nothing to do but entertain himself by doing stunts.

We will never know for certain if this is what really happened, but from what I could tell when I got home, it went something like this:

He wasn't even six months old, the little bugger. I'm not entirely sure what it was that killed him, but in a way it almost makes me feel a little better to know that maybe it wasn't my fault that they died. He had plenty of food and water, and his cage had been cleaned fairly recently. After talking to some friends, I found out that the water in our new apartment has higher concentrations of fluoride, and maybe it was a slow poison type situation. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. There are lots and lots of reasons why little hamsters can die, and I've written before about the inherent terror and paranoia that comes from owning a hamster. 

Losing Bandy was hard, but losing both my little friends within a few days of each other was super tough. Sometimes in life there are things we can't control, as I wrote about before, but boy do I wish we could.

And now, for the first time in almost two and a half years...

I have no hamsters.