When I was in 6th grade, I bought a hamster as a gift for my science teacher, Mr. Clifford. I thought he should have a hamster in class, since another teacher at school had gerbils.. The hamster was grey and white, and I named her Elizabeth. It was basically a sneaky way to "have" a hamster without having it at home. That summer, he asked me if I'd take care of Elizabeth at home, and my mom agreed. We kept her from then on. We got another male hamster, Hamlet, hoping to breed them. Hamlet died fairly young. We're not sure why. He got really sick one night when my mom was out. I was the only one home. He started having trouble breathing. He gasped for hours, I didn't know what to do. By the time my mom ot home, he was really sick.. and he died in my hands to the tune of "peaceful easy feeling", playing on the clock radio.
I've since then seen this happen to at least two other hamsters. It seems to be some really fast respiratory illness.
Anyway.. I ended up breeding hamsters for years, until I was a senior in high school. For some reason, I named most of them really boring people names - mostly names of family members.. in spite of my normally non-conformist nature. I feel like I could write a book on hamster care, but alas, I don't have time.
My senior year, I stopped breeding hamsters, since I was getting really pick about the homes I would send them to, and I knew I couldn't keep my remaining fuzzy friends in the dorms at college. I did end up adopting a pet rat though, from a local wildlife center.
When I was in college, I spent a few years sort of virtually rodent free (Shhh!). When I moved into an apartment, I got a lovely satin orange teddy bear hamster named Fempto. I would have loved to breed him, but I never succeeded. He was a wonderful guy..
Maybe and Stuart were siblings which my friend Tracy and I got from one of her co-workers' daughters a few years later. They were the result of breeding between what should have been two same sex hamsters that the girl had gotten a few months earlier. The parents were very young. There were 4-5 pups in the litter, if I remember correctly. I got Maybe with the hope of mating him with Fempto, but they never produced a successful litter - We named her Maybe because we thought she was "maybe" pregnant many times. She did give birth at least once, but devoured the babies. We removed the remaining 4 from her nest and tried to raise them on kitten milk formula, but they all died within 2 days. It was heartbreaking. We frantically called local pet stores, hoping that they might have a mother hamster who had just given birth, but none of them did. In general, if this ever happens to you, don't blame yourself if the pups don't make it. At this young age, it's incredibly hard to regulate their temperature without dehydrating them. You basically have to hold them on a cloth in your hand the entire time, swab their bums to stimulate their bowels periodically and feed them every few hours.. and even then, they might not make it. Baby hamsters can eat solid food after just a few weeks - their chances of surviving go way up after their eyes open and they grow fur and start eating normal food.
Anyway - Stuart was a thin, muscular teddybear maniac, who cleaned his fur once a month whether it needed it or not. Maybe was a strong, active cutie. Both died fairly young, from some sort of tumor problem.. it was pretty awful. I'm not sure if the cancer had anything to do with how inbred they were, but that probably didn't help. Someday we'd like to have another hamster, but we need to focus on the animals we have already, for now.
I'm sure there are more out there, but here are a few Hamster related links that I've stumbled upon so far:
