My children wanted a hamster, begging for it in the way they ask for anything small and cuddly and cute. “Please, mom, please mom, please!” They promised to feed the hamster and clean his or her cage. They vowed never to let it run wild around the house and possibly burrow itself into a sofa and make a nest there, the way a hamster did in the home of the friend I once knew.

I was adamant. “No hamsters. No gerbils or ferrets or pet mice.” I explained these animals were rodents, and rodents belonged outside. Not indoors, in their bedrooms, where the scent of cedar sawdust would permeate their clothes, their bed sheets, their hair, and drift down the hall to the kitchen, where I would also smell it. 

Friends I polled backed me up, citing the squeaking wheel on which hamsters play, only at night, and for hours at a clip, and their long, seemingly endless lifespan. “Twelve years!” one friend said. “The pet store told me it would live five years max.” The consensus was unanimous: “Stand your ground!” (more…)

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