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The World according to hamsters
Once upon a time, a hamster lived in a burrow and wrote a little book about hamster wisdom. Hamster writing isn’t like human writing. Hamsters don’t have pen and paper. They use a series of marks on leaves, similar to hieroglyphics. It has taken many years, and advanced computer technology, to be able to translate it. But it shows hamsters have intelligence, strategy, thoughts and feelings.
The hamster author signed himself as Doc (translation). This book is now available, in translation, with illustrations, after zoologists found the original burrow and writings (many many leaves). And also found the descendants of Doc living nearby.
This is believed to be Doc’s great great great great great (x 56 greats) grandson, now living in captivity and studying leaves.
Here is the translation of Doc’s Hamster Book:
Once upon a time there was just earth and stars and the giant hamster in the Sky. The giant hamster in the sky made all hamsters and decided they should live underground in burrows. Once a month, all hamsters leave the burrows at midnight and find a safe place to sit and look up at the Giant Hamster in the sky. Here is a drawing of the giant hamster in the Sky
(Editors note: Astronomers didn’t realise this was a hamster and it’s commonly designated as Leo the Lion in our world).
The giant Hamster in the sky originally made two hamsters – a male and female hamster, of lots of different colours and sizes, and told them to procreate and live underground, for their own safety, to protect them from pterodactyls, and said they should come out at night for food and exercise, when the pterodactyls were asleep. Myself and my ancestors were made into golden hamsters.
This story has been passed down from golden hamster family to golden hamster family and we survived the dinosaur period and while many creatures became extinct, we survived because we lived underground.
It quickly became clear to us that male and female hamsters didn’t get on at all. The great Hamster in the Sky didn’t explain this very well. But we male hamsters developed solitary lives and as a result we became quite intuitive and sensitive to our surroundings and nature. We would help our lady hamsters for one day only, so they could keep procreating baby hamsters, and we got to enjoy our solitary existence and occasionally having a bit of a tussle with another male hamster over some food in the wild.
The first chief Hamster died many years ago but passed on plenty of stories. This is one of them. The chief Hamster said that if hamsters listened very carefully they could hear things that human beans couldn’t hear and this helped them to predict the future. For example if something was about to fall on them they would hear subtle movements before the fall and move out of the way quickly.
Hamsters and humans lived without problem for many years. We were too small and fast for the human beans to be bothered to catch us to eat and they had plenty of other things to eat. But we had to be very careful about flying creatures.
Then machines came along. Machines are bad for hamsters. The human beans got lazy and started using machines to dig up the land and this destroyed our burrows and made us have to flee and make new burrows – but if we dug the burrows very very deep underground, we were ok and just had to make new entrances.
Here is a story from my cousin: He remembers his Mother telling him how to make a good burrow and larder. His Mother told him the most important thing was to find soft things like grass and some sticks. The grass lines the burrow to make it warm and cosy and the sticks help hold a nest together so it doesn’t collapse. His Mother told him to always make his larder burrow separate from his nest burrow and never to go to the toilet in his nest as he would be wet for a long time before he could come above ground again. And to make a tunnel to a separate burrow to go to the toilet. Called a erth closet. This wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation and baby hamsters are told this from before they even open their eyes. The human beans copied many hamster ideas and made their own erth closets and tried to build burrows above ground, which wasn't very clever because sometimes they fell down if it rained.
Here is a drawing of a good burrow (1)
Although we hamsters look and listen for the great hamster in the sky, once a month, there are sadly some hamsters who were born with problems and couldn’t stop looking at the great Hamster in the sky – either they were eaten because they sat still too long, or they just carried on being a bit different.
Here is a story I have passed down to my family and as such it has spread throughout the hamster world:
How to take care of your whiskers. Your whiskers are the most important thing to a hamster – they protect you from danger and they help you identify objects. If you twitch them really fast they can also help keep you warm if it becomes a bit chilly. To protect your whiskers, make sure you hold your food in your hands and keep your whiskers clean, so they don’t get matted. Also make sure you make your burrow entrance wide enough that your whiskers don’t get rubbed shorter when entering and leaving your burrows.
This ook (editor’s note – this is hamster for book) is for all future generations of hamsters, so nothing is forgotten to help us keep our true nature and survive.
Finally I wish to remind all hamsters that they are not squirrels. Some ignorant human beans sometimes say hamsters are squirrels, but they are not. Hamsters are much cleverer than squirrels. Squirrels migrated many hundreds of years ago so it is very silly of a human bean to think a hamster is a squirrel. Also we are not rats. Rats have long tales and jump. We hamsters are diggers and ground dwellers. We can jump but only in extreme circumstances and then we often just land on our backsides rather than our feet.
We hamsters are unique in that the Hamster in the Sky made us with special dry larders in our cheeks for carrying lots of food.
Note 1: Diagram adapted from this one https://www.hamstersociety.sg/hamster-care-blog/2020/2/29/the-art-of-hamster-burrows
