Two of the world’s cutest hamsters living their best lives in Rhode Island
Much like all stories, the origin of Mushroom and Jupiter started with your typical childhood explanation
When a mommy and a mommy love each other ... very ... mu....?
Wait, that's not right. How can two hamsters be born to two moms?
You see, there was once a group of three hamsters that lived together that were all told to be girls. They were separated into their own enclosures (which if you're a first time hamster caretaker, hamsters should not be caged together!). While their enclosures were close enough to be convenient to look over them all at once, they were also a bit too close for the determined ham.
What wasn't known at the moment is that one of the hamsters was actually male. And this poor, unsuspecting male was minding his own business, in an enclosure with a 10+ inch wall height, which you would assume is perfectly safe.
What you should not assume is the tenacity of a female hamster who was, in purely scientific and biological terms, looking to "get some". She somehow managed to wedge herself between the side of her cage and her water bottle and shimmied up the side of her enclosure, high enough to grab onto and vault herself over the edge and into the male hamster's cage.
To keep this a bit more PG than the Discovery Channel, let's just say she did in fact accomplish her goal, and after some confusion the next morning about how two hamsters were in one enclosure, and a few more weeks, a horde of seven baby hams had popped into the world with slimmer odds than lightning striking the trophy at a Minnesota Vikings Super Bowl parade (but fingers crossed!).
While three hamsters are easy enough for someone to take care of, ten is a bit extreme, so these hamsters needed some new homes. Of course, you want the best for these little fellers, so while they were open to being adopted out, the home they were going to could not just have some normal, run of the mill person. You need an amazing person, someone willing to take in and care for these little fellers. Someone who is the peak example of human: caring, funny, smart, gorgeous. Only absolute human perfection would be good enough for this lucky hamster.
Now, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I fit all of these 100%.
Ok fine Michelle, we hit these 100%. Maybe I'm 101%. Anyway.Right off the bat, we were both pretty excited to take in a hamster. Sure, there would be some prep, enclosures, enrichment, and food to gather. But while I was under the impression we were only getting one, the idea of two quickly became an option. After all, the food comes in such large amounts compared to what they eat, so what's one more enclosure? (we started with large, clear rubbermaid bins, WITH LOCKING LIDS just in case they were anything like their mother).
So after some convincing and no good argument as to why we shouldn't get two other than dining room table space, since that's where they'd live until they would have more permanent enclosures, we settled on two. Then came the hard part. Who were we taking?
For me, Jupiter stood out pretty quickly. She was by far the largest of the group, already trying to get on the wheel at just a couple weeks old, and very independent.
For Michelle, there was one little runt of the litter she had her eye on from the start, wobbling about like they weren't quite sure of their footing. If you've known us in the past, we're apt to take in these little struggling souls, much like our first fish together in college that always looked and could only swim downwards. Or our second one, which only seemed to swim on its side. This little ham sandwich would be a perfect fit.
Much like their human father, these hamsters are New Jersey transplants. Of course, I had the choice to come here and decided to stay after finding Michelle, coffee milk, and pizza strips. These two didn't have much of a choice.
With the halfway point between us and our new children being somewhere in Connecticut, the acquisition of the hamsters was done on the side of an IKEA parking lot, near some construction on a far fence. To the untrained eye, it definitely looked like a shady back alley deal was going on. Granted, while Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam are pretty easy to get addicted to, I don't think they count.
Packed up in the car with a 98 mile trip ahead of us, we were off! Keeping the music low while Jupiter slept and trying to avoid potholes while Mushroom wanted nothing to do with us. If we didn't know better, we'd think Mushroom did NOT want to be there. After a little over an hour and a half, we were back in Rhode Island with the hamsters asleep and waiting for their new homes.
Jupiter took to her enclosure pretty quickly, while Mushroom seemed absolutely pissed to be here. She explored a bit, but mostly just hunkered down in her ceramic mushroom hideout. There was a bit of opening up, and a good amount of pee on the wheel, but something just didn't seem right with him.
Wait, did you just say him? I thought you had two girls?. Yes, dear reader, I did.
Now that night, I went to bed pretty early after a little over three hours of driving, and another hour and a half of IKEA perusing, I was pretty beat.
What I woke up to was a conversation with the original owner that culminated in "Mushroom didn't seem happy here", "He's not skittish, but shows zero interest", "He seems to miss his old family", "Was this specific ham a mistake?", "When is Brian waking up??", "Will he mind driving again?". The biggest one that sealed it was the message of:
Ok so your "Mushroom" might not be the wobbly one, there is one here "Nova" that is definitely the smallest, but is shy and needs some TLC.
And that was that. Well, it was put to a "sleep on it" at 1:33 AM, but by 10:30 the swap was confirmed. We almost went with another of the group, Comet, but I'm glad we went with Nova, who turned out to be the original Mushroom. She is definitely the originally wobbly one.
At 2:02 PM, I was back on the road to IKEA, treating our Nova-shroom to some Taylor Swift and Five Finger Death Punch, hoping he enjoyed his little sleepover. A quick swap in the same spot as the day before, this time without any meatballs, I had the OG true Mushroom in my possession. At a little after 6 PM, our little ham slice had finally settled in near her sister's enclosure, both snuggled away in their forever home.
