Tuesday, January 30, 2007

what do hamsters eat?

When not being stuffed up some eager pervert's ass, hamsters generally serve as pets. Having a life expectancy of about one or two years, the little fuckers barely live long enough to reproduce. When they do reproduce, it all happens quickly-- the mating, the gestation, the birth, the weaning-- everything.

Today, one of my Level Threes claimed that hamsters are "the most horrible pet to have." When I asked why, she told the class a story about her hamster, which was apparently pregnant when purchased. The hamster gave birth to five little hamsterlings (or so she claimed; I have no idea what a standard litter size is for hamsters), but not long after the birth, the pups appeared to have stopped moving.

"I poked the body of one of the babies... and its head rolled away!" said my student. I asked about the others. "All five had been killed by the mother!" was the reply.

At this point, another student in the class jumped in to support the first student's claim: "Oh, yes! Mother hamsters will kill their own babies if they think something is threatening them," she said. Confounded by this logic and fearing I already knew what rationale the students would offer for such behavior, I asked the second student why the mother might kill her babies. "Because if something is threatening them," she said, "she would rather kill them than allow something else to kill them."

The first student said, "I was about five when I saw the dead babies. Then my mother grabbed the mother hamster, took her to the bathroom, and flushed her down the toilet." The class was rolling with laughter as we imagined this scenario. I asked my student why her mother would flush a living hamster down the toilet. "I think she thought that the mother killing her babies wasn't a good example of nature for me to see," she said.

This was the opening I needed to write Nature is red in tooth and claw on the board.

And now, for your viewing and listening pleasure:

Satanic "Hampster"dance!

I love the blurb at the top claiming that the creator has been threatened with legal action.


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