Win or Lose Daniel Yim M. French English 2222.06 October 19, 2004 Daniel Yim M. French English II, Per. 6 19 October 2004 Win or Lose In December 2003, the bet was set at 20 bucks. We, the three Asian eighth-graders sitting around the table in the far corner, waited idly in the advisory "break" that our school kindly granted us on Thursdays. Mrs. Hartgrove, the advisory teacher, had a class pet, a dark-coated male hamster named Brownie. Most likely the three of us would remain huddled around the cage-- pointing, staring, and/or laughing at such a simple rodent. If dogs were a man's best friend, then hamsters would be their wives. We loved Brownie, and each of us subconsciously wanted one for ourselves. This internal desire grasped the best of us, though. As full fledge adolescents, my friends and I were prone to experiment, careless to think, and we would try to do almost anything, so we came up with a bet. Our challenge was: "Who can keep a hamster the longest?" We made a cruel game much like a variation of the popular Survivor series, so that, in the end, only one would survive. We quickly vowed to purchase a hamster by the following week, after having settled the terms and conditions. In dawn of my ninth-grade year, I had one hamster that I bought for eight outrageous dollars, but little did I know the profound effect this hamster would have on my life. Before the purchase of this hamster, I was afraid that I might kill it due to innermost my fear of failing to be a good parent. I thought, "Maybe I can experiment with these rodents to test my role as a father. After all, if a hamster dies from my failure, it wouldn't be as bad as losing a child." The hamster I chose from the dim-lit fish tank at Petco had a cute, dark-orange colored coat with some white segments mixed in, and as I walked out of the doors with a glowing grin on my face, I instantly began thinking of a name for her, and a name clearly came to me. She was to be named "Twinkie." The name came as fast to me as if the angel who named baby Jesus, Gabriel, told me what to name her (perhaps God's messengers enjoy eating Hostess snacks). Almost two weeks later, my mother felt compelled to purchase a female companion for Twinkie, as if an animal actually feels lonesome. After feeling guilty about my deprivation of not having a sibling in the family, my mom began to feel "bad" for the hamster to be left unaccompanied in that dark, spacious, lonely cage. I became a repeat customer at Petco a day after. The second was named "Cinnamon" after her dark brown coat that distinguished her from the Aspen wood shavings that surrounded her feet. The tips of her fur were tinted a dark brown, while the section near the root of the hair was black. She was an acceptable crony for Twinkie. I placed Cinnamon in the same cage with Twinkie to improve Twinkie's dwindling self-esteem and socialization skills from the lack of a friend (as my mom assumed). The hamsters started to take comfort in the palm of my massive hands after a month or two of handling them. Their colorless, beady eyes began to see me as a trustworthy figure, which was well enough to feed sunflower seeds held between my index and thumb without a need of a Band-aid afterwards. However, during this intimate owner-to-pet bonding era, my maternal family planned to spend a great celebration for my grandparents' fiftieth anniversary on a cruise to Hawaii. For me to attend that, I decided to lend the cage of my two hamsters to my friend for safekeeping, which was a better environment than my empty home. I made sure he knew how to feed and care for the hamsters properly, and then I left for the flight to Honolulu the day after. An exciting week-long vacation of free food and seasickness aroused the expectations I held for this high-class cruise; however, the news as I arrived back home did not excite me in any way. Indeed, we assumed the hamsters were both female; therefore, we left them to safely play in the same cage to save expenses; though, that was just our unknowledgeable assumption and the assurance of the pet experts at Petco. Consequently, I came home to a fat-bellied, pregnant Twinkie, who gave birth in the week after. I suddenly owned six more hamsters than I ever intended to have, which made a grand total of eight…too fast, too soon. This story appears to end there, but unfortunately, it does not. I, a first-time hamster raiser, did not know when to remove a litter from their mother, so my hypothetical guess came to be that it was the perfect time to separate them when they stopped snuggling under the mother's stomach for warmth and shelter and began to seek independence. To my surprise, I was miserably far from guessing "perfect." These critters reproduced just as fast as the rumored rabbits. The eight I had quickly tripled in size and ultimately morphed into a furry rodent militia of 24. I became outnumbered. Then week two came, and neither of my friends bought a hamster; they both bailed out on me with pathetic excuses like, "Sorry, my mother has allergies, and I don't think a hamster would be healthy for her," or, "Hamsters are so last week; they're lame." Such responses left a frozen, half-smile on my face when I thought of what I was going to do with a hamster that I just invested eight dollars out of my own pocket. I learned much from these simple house pets, including how to divide the two cages by sex, which came to me naturally after the reproduction havoc my hamsters created. Now I am able to come home without finding a new digit to add to my total. However, from websites, to magazine articles and to books, I successfully made myself knowledgeable about the right way to control the hormones of these hamsters and also when to separate the litter from the parents. Not only did I learn a handful in the category of breeding, my time that I spent with them educated me an immense amount about their behavior. I, for example, learned how to tame my hamsters to not bite my finger if it would ever get near their mouths. Moreover, I learned that I have passed the test of my future paternal abilities and was able to pull through without one complication. Numerous "older" people compare their children to animals, or relate them in some way or another, and I never understood why, but after this experience, the relationship of the two became clear as glass. My care for these needy and numerous hamsters helped me overcome my fear of parenthood. All in all, I did win the bet and its prize, but in the end, I realized I gained much more than 20 bucks; I realized that if I could breed and maintain 24 hamsters, I just might not be a bad father one day.