Every Christmas, Birthday, or other celebration that involved gifting led to my asking for a pet.  It was clear from early on that dogs were off limits.  Too expensive and too much responsibility.  Cats were also off limits.  Too allergic (my mother, not me).  My quest for a pet that met the qualifications of being ‘cheap,’ ‘not a lot of responsibility’ and ‘nonallergenic’ began.  In a time that pre-dates Target and Walmart, the store of the day was Woolworth.  Woolworth was a large-ish (by the standards of 1980) store that sold everything from food brought to you at a counter to sewing machines to hamsters.  As a child, I spent many hours at Woolworth.  I never really had any money to spend and I distinctly remember being followed around by store clerks as though they could sense our empty pockets.  Even so, I wasn’t there for anything more than to pass time.  To pass time and to develop a plan to acquire one of those adorable hamsters.  Much as I’d envisioned myself snuggling up and rolling around with a dog, I developed a clear vision of myself holding one of those sweet balls of fluff in my hands, feeding it little treats, and it looking back at me with its adorable little beady eyes in gratitude.

I’m not exactly certain how the message was conveyed to my Dad that my greatest desire for my 9th (I think) birthday was a hamster.  Somehow the hamster showed up in the kitchen and I was told that the hamster had come from my Dad though I didn’t physically see him make the delivery of this magical birthday gift.  Yet there the hamster was, sleeping in a small plastic cage in all of her teddy bear golden brown fuzzy glory.  And she was all mine to love and hold and feed and snuggle.  That was until I tried to pick up said hamster.  When I gently put my hand into the cage and attempted to swaddle the hamster in my palm, I was met with a flash of fury!  That hamster stood straight up on her back legs (much like a real bear) and released the most frightening, high-pitched squeaks imaginable.  I quickly pulled my hand back in fear that she was going to sink her little teeth into me.  She continued to stand on her back legs, squeaking uncontrollably.  Then I noticed something even stranger.  That hamster had only one eye opened.  At first I thought perhaps she was holding one eye closed.  But nope, she was indeed missing an eye.  This was terribly confusing and absolutely not what I had envisioned.  First, I had no clue that hamsters could make such a terrifying noise.  Second, what do you make of a one-eyed fresh-from-the-pet-store hamster?  That’s when I decided to let the hamster settle in a little bit more before putting my hand back in to the cage to kick-start our relationship.  Instead I turned my attention to the ‘extras’ that came with the hamster.  There was a wheel for her to run on.  That was super cool as I’d seen many a hamster killing time in the pet store racing around incessantly on wheels just like this one.  There were also hamster food, hamster treats, and hamster bedding. I picked up the bag of bedding which had a really nice smell and turned it around in my hands, looking at all the pictures of the animals on the bag.  That’s when I saw the orange label.  It read, “Charlie’s Discount Pets.”  My mother saw it pretty much at the same time as me.  That label sparked a flame in my mother.  Her interpretation of the situation was “of course he shopped at a discount pet store because he doesn’t think you deserve anything better.”  My interpretation was that perhaps that’s why the hamster squealed and was missing an eye.  Maybe discount pet stores were different from the Woolworth where all those really cute, non-squeaky, two-eyed hamsters were sold.  The hamster’s squeaking (which really didn’t stop for quite some time) brought me back to what was going on right then and there.  It really didn’t matter to me where the hamster came from, why my dad chose to shop where he did, or even that this little critter wasn’t exactly matching up to be my dream hamster.   The reality was I finally had a hamster!

I went on to name the hamster Squeaky, a name she continued to live up to every time I woke her up from a nap.   When I finally had a chance to ask my dad about his choice of the one-eyed hamster as a birthday gift, he told me that he must have only had a look at the hamster’s ‘eyed side.’  Hmm, okay I can see that.  It’s like how I sometimes now rent a car and don’t do a complete walk-around to inspect all the surfaces.  Perhaps that’s a bit of a heritable trait.  My mother’s attitude towards the hamster didn’t change much until I really needed her to pull through for me.  Maybe the hamster’s mere presence irritated her due to the fact that she came from a discounted store, maybe Squeaky’s squeaking was too alarming, or maybe my mother would never come to tolerate that I enjoyed a gift from my father–even a seemingly ‘less than’ hamster with all its one-eyed, squeaking imperfections.  In any case, it wasn’t too long before Squeaky began to move slowly, wouldn’t eat or drink, and it was clear that she wasn’t well.  During my overwhelming sadness, my mother helped me to care for Squeaky by warming her up, giving her some sort of medication from an infant dropper, and when it was Squeaky’s time to pass, gently placing her in a shoe box filled with a soft towel.  I don’t remember much after that except that there was a burial in the little bit of dirt there was in our yard.  In time I came to miss all the good this little one-eyed hamster had brought to my life.  Holding her, watching her run on her wheel, finding treats she liked and watching her cram them into her cheek pouches–all of this had brought me joy and I wanted that back.  Eventually it was time to head back to Woolworth to dream about my next fluffy bundle of hamster love–discounted or not.