Let’s travel back in time to last Sunday 11/01/2009, it’s 4:39 am in the morning and I’m about to get my son up to leave for our vacation flight.
Being half asleep, I bumped my son’s hamster cage by accident, but his hamster doesn’t move… Hmmm, I bumped it harder this time ( intentionally), but again the hamster doesn’t move.
This is not the way a vacation should start!
Yes, unfortunately, my son’s hamster is no more… So I had a decision to make, tell him then, or not…
I decided “not“! I called my mom and had her drive over and put the hamster in the freezer via a ziplock bag, so I could delay the decision until after we got back. It was a hard choice to make…
My Options:
- Buy another hamster that looked identical to his, and possible lie to my son.
- Tell him then and there and deal with it.
- After we get back, tell him the cat ate it (just kidding).
After a lot of internal debating, I decided to go with option 1) “Buy another hamster that looked identical to his, and lie to my son.” I would hate to lie to my son, but he’s only 9 and he still gets very attached to his pets (we already dealt with a gerbil dying a few years ago, not a fun ordeal). After breakfast, the first thing he wanted to do before going school was to check on his hamster. Luckily, since we decided to let him get an extra hour of sleep instead of riding the bus, he didn’t have time to do that. At least that is what we told him.
So I went to PetSmart, to buy another Russian dwarf hamster. Of course, the batch of hamsters that they had were not the right color. His hamster had grey fur with just a slight bit of brownish tinge around the edge of it’s back, and a white underbelly. The latest batch of hamsters had no grey and almost all brownish colored fur on their backs with a white underbelly.
Just my luck! So, that would not do… So I bought a different species of dwarf hamster that had what I thought was close enough coloring.
It cost $15, not a lot of money for the price of a potentially happy kid (or at least not sad kid)…
So, did it work? Sort of…
He said that “Twirly” looks like he’s a different color, but that he hasn’t seen him for a while and maybe he forgets what his colors look like… I didn’t say anything to that remark… So far, he hasn’t commented other than that statement. If he continues, I won’t lie to him…
I’ll be walking on eggshells for the next few days!
What a sharp son you have HAHA!! 🙂
He must really love his pets to recognize that Twirly has a different coat… and personality perhaps 😉
I’d do the same for my kids, if we had pets. And if I had a kid.
It’s too heartbreaking as a kid to know that your pet died. 🙁
You don’t know the half of it…
After his gerbil died, he was sad for over 6 months.
There is nothing worse than seeing your kid mourn over a pet that died over 6 months ago… Augh!
I love the name Twirly. I also think it was the right decision to not tell him about his pet before the trip, but it he gets too curious then… maybe you should reveal the truth.
SJGR 🙂
I agree with you, I think I will tell him if he asks me. I would feel really bad if I lied to him about it.
Besides, I really want to take that ziplock bag with the frozen hamster out of my freezer (yuck!)