and get it out, trying not to flinch. There. I’m better at this already. I mean, he’s quite cute, with his snuffly little nose. We need to think of a good name for him.
I take a photo and I’m carefully lowering him back into the cage, when the guy suddenly bellows, “Piss off!” on his landline phone to someone.
Which makes me jump. Which makes my grip on the hamster loosen for a nanosecond.
Just a nanosecond. But it’s enough. To my utter horror, before I can grasp him again, the hamster wriggles out of my hand and runs off over the floor. He stops and looks at me as though to say, “Ha ha!” (OK, I may be projecting), and I stare back, my heart beating hard.
I can’t admit I’ve dropped the hamster again. The guy will say I’m irresponsible and will never let me keep him. I’ll quietly catch him myself, I decide. I reach gingerly for the hamster, but he deftly evades my grasp. I make a bolder swipe, but this time he scampers right away, through an open side door.
Shit.
Crawling silently, I follow the hamster through the door and find myself in a dimly lit stockroom. I hastily push the door closed and look around. It’s only a small space. It’s contained. I’ve got to find this bloody hamster.
I listen for scrabbling, but I can’t hear anything. So I put on my phone’s flashlight function and swing it around the space, searching for the reflection of two beady little eyes. Nothing.
I suddenly notice a box of hamster treats on a nearby shelf and have a flicker of inspiration. I wrench it open, telling myself that I’ll buy it, and find some revolting pellets, which are presumably like caviar for hamsters.
There’s a big empty cardboard box nearby too. I turn it on its side and make a big pile of treats on the cardboard floor. Then I retreat to a squatting position, poised to move like lightning and trap the hamster. I feel like one of David Attenborough’s team, waiting to capture the Serengeti lion at the waterhole.
Except sometimes those teams wait for weeks, I recall.
No. Don’t think like that. I expect sometimes they only wait five minutes and the lion turns up. Exactly.
A few unbearable minutes pass. My thighs are slightly hurting from my squatting position. But I don’t dare move. David Attenborough’s team don’t complain when their noses get frozen off or whatever, do they? So I shouldn’t complain either.
Even so, I can’t help feeling disconsolate. How has it come to this? This was supposed to be an organized Christmas. A smooth Christmas. Not a Christmas where you end up squatting in a dingy back room waiting for a hamster to get hungry.
I’m just wondering if this is an utterly stupid idea and I should go and fess up to the guy, when I hear a tiny scrabbling noise and I stiffen. I peer through the gloom—and I can see two beady eyes glinting at me! Yes! It worked!
As the hamster nears the pile of food, I have to restrain myself from cheering. I did it! I’m a hamster whisperer! All I need to do now is—
Wait, what?
I peer at the hamster in disbelief as it edges onto the box. It’s a different hamster. It’s the wrong hamster. This one is half-beige, half-white. It must have been hiding somewhere in the stockroom and smelled the food.
What now? My brain whirls uncertainly as I watch the hamster pick up a treat between its paws. (Actually, that is quite cute.) What do I do? Do I trap this one? But I don’t want this one, I want my one. Where’s my one?
As I’m trying to decide how to proceed, another hamster suddenly joins the first. But this is the wrong hamster too. It’s a darker gray-brown color. How many bloody hamsters are there in this stockroom?
I’m quite tempted to go and tell the pet-shop guy he’s overrun by hamsters, only I can’t bring myself to move. Because if those hamsters were lured out by the food, then maybe…just maybe…
I stiffen as I hear a new scrabbling sound on the stone floor—and my heart suddenly leaps. Yes! It’s the beige one! He’s approaching cautiously but then stops dead.
Go on, I silently will him. Go and get the food. You know you want to.
He pauses, and I gaze at him, using every single psychic hamster power I possess. Go on…go on…