2003-02-25 - 11:58 p.m.

Madame Mao

When I was selling the baby hamsters on Thursday, I was also looking for a breedable female, preferably one with long hair. There weren't any at the pet store in Colonie, but they called up to their branch store in Clifton Park and they had some there. I meant to go up there the next day, but kept forgetting.

I'd have to say that Clifton Park is probably the most commercially active area of the Capital District. That isn't necessarily a good thing - ghastly suburban developments are spreading out from the Northway like a bloodstain. It reminded me very much of the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, in fact I even saw a new Cracker Barrel there - I didn't think that there were any north of New Jersey. For those of you who don't know, Cracker Barrel is a chain of restaurants that try to look like "down home" general stores. Attached to each restaurant is a large gift shop full of the sort of tchochkas that send grandmothers into a frenzy. I thought they were strictly a Down South sort of business.

Anyway, the pet store was huge, and it was staffed by young women who just seemed to be very fond of animals. This is fine with me - it certainly beats mall pet stores where it seems the staff could care less. The woman who was helping me out was all about rats. Well, she can have them - they are a little to reptilian for my tastes. Speaking of which - there was a huge rat there, the biggest I've ever seen - it was about the size of a cat, I kid you not. I dubbed it Ratzilla.

There were several cages of hamsters, but for some reason there were lots of males. However, there was one cage with four black-and-white banded longhaired females who seemed to be about two and a half months old. This was exactly what I was looking for. The hamsters seemed to be pretty mellow, which meant that the staff had been handling them. I finally settled on the one with the smallest white band, if for no other reason than to tell her apart from Pooka, the hamster that lives in the cage to the right of my computer.

I debated for a while what I was going to call the new hamster, and I find that eventually a name will occur to me if I let it. Sometimes it takes a while, but this time it didn't. A while ago Lily admitted to a sneaking admiration for Madame Mao, the last wife of Mao Zedong and member of the infamous Gang of Four. While she may have been vindictive, power-hungry and perhaps a little crazy, she certainly was a strong woman. So, Madame Mao it is.

A little about the real Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) can be found here.