The Stars and the Cookie Jar

My hamster died this morning. As a child, I wasn't allowed to have 'filthy rodents'. N was the first to point out that there was nothing wrong with me having one if I wanted, and so last year she bought me Yrsinia Pestis Hammie, my first (probably last) filthy rodent.

She was pure evil. She was a lot of fun. I cried for about half an hour, and then we put her in one of the small bakery boxes I bought last week, and N dug a dainty hole in the back garden and we had the semi-traditional (semi because it came about two decades too late in the general chronology of my life) American Small Pet Funeral. I made Yrsinia P. a memorial out of a soapstone coaster, with her dates inscribed with permanent marker -- hey, it was Martha Stewart Archival Scrapbooking permanent marker.

But the sweetest part, in some odd way I can't even go halfway to explaining, was the way N carefully filled in the bakery box with clean hamster bedding and alfalfa, just as if it was going to contain something more important than one two-ounce rigored rodent.

I love my wife. There's nothing like a dead Siberian dwarf hamster in a pink cardboard box to make you realize how much you love your wife.