2001-06-14 - 11:05 p.m.

Asleep In The Garden

This is probably going to gross some of you out. All I can say is: oh well.

A little less than five months ago my namesake, Uberhamster, died. Well, today I finally buried him.

Took my time, didn't I? I think it's mainly because I didn't really want to say goodbye to him.

After he died I did what I do to any hamster that dies: I wrap them up in a paper towel, seal them in a plastic bag and then put them in the freezer. It would definitely be unhygienic to leave the little critters rotting in their cages until garbage day, so to keep them from rotting, I put their little bodies in the freezer.

What usually happens then is that when garbage day rolls around, I take the bag from the freezer and put it in the garbage, which then gets taken outside. I usually call this a "curbside ceremony," a little hamster gallows humor.

However, when there is a hamster that I am especially fond of, I actually go to the trouble of burying them. Since I've been keeping hamsters as an adult I've only buried four hamsters: Sophia, Partly Cloudy, Pudge, and now Pudge's son Uberhamster. The first two died back in the 80s. Only the last two died while I've lived in the Hamster Palace.

The entire lot that my house is on is either paved or covered with cement, except for a rectangle about 10 by 25 feet at the extreme east side of my property. I think it used to be a vegetable garden years and years ago, but when I bought the house it was utterly wild and overgrown. In fact, it was so overgrown that I got a ticket from the city, declaring it a public eyesore ordering me to clean it up. I thought this was pretty funny considering the number of landmarks to ugliness that Frown Town has.

So I paid a landscaper to clean the brush out and put a very, very low maintenance garden there. He covered the whole area with pebbles and then planted six yew bushes. Given time the bushes will spread and cover most of the area back there. I really liked this solution, because it meant that there was something nice to look at back there that required almost no work from me. Mr. Hamster is not really down with the yard work.

When Pudge died in October of 1999 I buried her in the back corner of the rock garden. Her grave is marked with a red driveway reflector, with a laminated letter "P" stuck to it.

Uberhamster, unfortunately, died in mid-January. The garden was covered in snow and the ground was frozen. In fact, around that time there was so much snow that I couldn't even see Pudge's marker.

Eventually the weeks passed and the snow melted. Still I held off, because I thought that the ground might still be frozen. And then time got away from me. It's now mid-June and obviously the ground has been unfrozen for weeks.

Today I finally decided enough was enough. I went to the hardware store and bought the necessary implements, and buried Uberhamster in the back corner of the garden, right next to Pudge. Marking his grave is another driveway reflector, this one is blue and it has a laminated "U" on it.

If I buried every hamster that died, the little garden would quickly fill up, so I am only burying my special favorites.

I wonder, of the hamsters around now, will any of them merit special treatment like that? Maybe Lily's Sweet Mo.

In the cage next to my desk Cinnie is giving me a pointed look, like she knows just what I am writing about. Well, Cinnie, maybe I'll consider it if you're a good hamster and stop chewing on your water bottle.