Bear

Gotcha Date: June 2004
Official Status: Still On Patrol

I had just buried Stumpy, Lucy, and Hans. It was time to rescue some more little friends, and again I found them at the Animal Rescue League. A small, mellow, docile black bear male (Bear), and a really cute pudgy teddy-bear-faced golden Syrian (Squeegee), clearly both full-grown adults. Without further ado, I put them in their new exercise balls along with some treats and brought them home.

Bear is easy to deal with. He enjoys the human touch, and is very happy in his new habitrail setup. He also goes on walkabout regularly (okay, almost all the time) and he's always out and about, not hiding. He feeds and naps in his habitrail, but whenever I'm around he insists on his wandering adventure. A lot of the time he'll climb up to Squeegee's habitrail and hang out on the other side of the bars. Twice he's actually gotten inside, but even though I know they made whoopee, no litters ever resulted. Phew!

Squeegee is also very happy in her new home, but she was very skittish around me at the beginning. She hid when she noticed me looking in on her, and every now and then she'd nip at me. It took a little time to gain her trust, but nce that happened she became a fun little critter to interact with. Quite amazingly, she meticulously uses her little litter box - it's quite cute. Like all female goldens, when she goes on walkabout she raids the rabbit food and stashes it all under the bathtub (just like Kiwi and Dini did), so she needs to be managed more closely than Bear. A lot of rabbit food has disappeared, and I can only imagine the mess under there. She has also chewed her way out of many exercise balls (sometimes she gets out of a brand new ball on the first day of chewing on it, so she keeps me on my toes.

Update: February, 2005: I had a box fan (the kind people put in their windows) standing on the floor blowing air from one room to another. It was old and the plastic grate had some broken off pieces. One night I heard an odd clunking sound, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Then I heard it again. And again, and again. I finally figured out that Bear had wandered inside the fan and was getting hit by the fanblades as it spun. He must have really gotten knocked around. I saw him wander out through the hole in the grate where he got in - I guess he was trying to get out the other side and kept getting hit by the blades. He seemed a little out of sorts, but was otherwise uninjured. I can't believe how tough this hamster is.

Update: June 2005: I was working on Squeegee's habitrail while she was in her exercise ball. Bear was, as always, on walkabout. He managed to get inside Squeegee's habitrail without me noticing, and after I closed it back up I put Squeegee back inside. Since her habitrail is 5 large modules and 2 small modules and a lot of tubing (about 20 feet) the two hamsters didn't find each other right away. Later that night, I saw Bear in one of her modules, looking very stunned and his fur was all matted. I pickde him up and he started squawking, and I could tell that he had been hurt, I just didn't know how badly. Whatever blood there was had dried, and I couldn't tell how much blood there was because his fur is black. I put him in his habitrail and kept a close eye on him for a few days. He seemed fine at first, then he started nesting somewhere else, and when I went to check on him I noticed the distinctive smell of death. I took him out and looked more closely at him, and discovered a lot of necrotic tissue over his wounds, and an abscess on his back. Surprisingly, he was still very active and alive. I took him to the vet and she cleaned up his wounds and for the first time I saw how badly Squeegee had hurt him. He had some deep bites on his back and rear end, was missing a lot of skin and fur, and his abscess was very big. We put him on antibiotics, but decided against pain meds at the time - he was not in any pain that we could tell, and if he needed pain meds the time had passed when he was healing in his habitrail. He has pretty much healed now, and I'm still amazed he's alive. He is one tough little rodent.

Epilogue

Update September 22, 2005: I awoke today to a hamster crawling all over me in bed. At first I thought it was Bear, but when I woke up I found out it was Brownie. He had gotten out of his habitrail, and came to show me how clever he was. I quickly put him back in his habitrail and fixed the problem (I think one of the bunnies hopped up there and moved one of the modules, causing the tube to separate from it). I became very worried about Bear, because recently I had tried introducing these two hamsters (holding one in each hand) and both started chattering their teeth fiercely, so... okay, they won't get along. Fair enough. I was very worried that Brownie and Bear had a run-in overnight while I slept, and for many days I haven't seen any evidence at all that Bear is anywhere. Then it began to dawn on me - the night before, I had taken out the trash, and it is possible that Bear had gotten into one of the trash bags before I took it out to the dumpster. Unfortunately, the trash was picked up the following day so I had no way of checking, and it took several days before I even realized that this was a possibility. Believe it or not, I actually contacted an animal communicator to try to determine what happened to Bear. According to her, Bear was fine and hiding out in my apartment - he was upset that I brought in all the new hamsters, and he and Brownie did meet up, but did not fight, only showed curiosity towards each other. Of Brownie, Bear said "He runs like an idiot! He just runs and runs and wants to go anywhere. I know where I'm going when I move about". It certainly sounded like Bear, but the communicator was unable to tell me where to find him, only that he was safe, that he had not gotten into the trash, and that he would come out when he was ready.

I really really hope to see Bear one day again, but I fear that he is gone. If so, I can only say: I'm so sorry, Bear. For all you survived, to have such an ignominious end... I'll never forgive myself.

Official status: Still On Patrol
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