When I was around nine or ten years old I discovered my female hamster, Daisy, eating one of her babies. She was crouched over the slashed-open belly of one of her young, chowing down with both front paws.
I will remember that moment for as long as I live. It was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen, including my husband's toilet when he was still a bachelor. It has literally haunted me. I already lacked any fondness for Daisy, and had in fact put her in solitary confinement (with her young, whom she was supposed to be CARING for) because the father hamster, whose sex was unknown at first and was thus named Tootsie, had been terrorized by that bitch for months. Every night she'd chase him around the cage and he'd finally scamper up the side and wedge himself against the hamster wheel and dangle there all night to escape her. She'd march around the bottom of the cage, eating the tastier pickings out of the food bowl, waggling her fat ass pompously while Tootsie hung there for 9 hours. Sometimes Tootsie's balls would swell up to the size of two Clementines, and they'd hang halfway down the side of the cage, where she could reach them. One day she took a chomp and that was it. With my allowance I got Tootsie his own digs, a small but safe and comfortable bachelor pad.
Given all this, given the fact that Daisy was the female hamster equivalent of Stalin, you can understand the severity of my situation when I tell you that this weekend, I actually feel a tiny bit of empathy for Daisy. After spending the last 48 hours with my toddler whose head I expect, at any moment, to start spinning 360 degrees while emitting a torrent of pea soup, I can kind of understand why Daisy went a little bat-shit crazy.
And she had 6 of the little fuckers to deal with. SIX.
I don't know what happened to my sweet little girl. Every once in awhile, my husband or I will lift our weary head and offer a hypothesis - "Ear infection?"- before collapsing again in misery, or wiping her streaming nose, or coughing up a lung, or fetching more water or another snack or a suddenly fervently missed and required toy. But there is no point in guessing, because it really doesn't matter what the problem is. Knowing the problem would, for some reason, make my husband feel better, because he's one of those people who has an urgent need to know WHY, but knowing why she is being the world's biggest pain in the ass isn't going to make her any more charming. And chances are the only "why" is because she's two.
The littlest thing will set her off. It's like living with Anna Wintour. We scamper around like minions, terrified that if we don't have the milk and snack waiting the MOMENT she steps from her royal bath all hell will break loose. Because it will. And very often all hell breaks loose anyway, despite our fervent commitment. The oddest, most unpredictable things will set her off. Like, I put on a sweater because I was a little chilled and the next thing I knew my three foot daughter was making a sound akin to an air raid siren. "NOOOOOOOO Mommy NO SWEATER!"
Once she's off, there's no rhyme or reason to what will stop her. It's a lot of trial and error. Sure, the immediate reaction is to take the sweater off but really that's locking the barn door after the horse has escaped. She's off and running, tears plopping, snot dripping, hair popping out of her cute pony tails like a mini Medusa. My husband and I scamper around with humble offerings of toys, books, snacks, an empty water bottle, because that worked once, three weeks ago. Eventually, just before a vein pops in my neck, I'll hit randomly on the magic solution. "Do you want to draw with chalk outside?"
And like a light switch she'll suddenly beam angelically through the snot and tears, throw her hands up, and cry with unbridled delight, "CHALK TIIIIIIIME!"
And you can see behind the malicious glimmer in her eye an expression that says, "It was so simple. What took you cretins so long to figure this out?"
I'm not big on cannibalism, so no need to call CPS (or "CPA" as my husband mistakenly referred to them when, in response to the latest freak-out, I sobbed, "Alcohol tiiiiime!" which my two year old latched on to and repeated, alternating with "I want alcohol!" until I was able to distract her). Nor would I ever harm my child - certainly I would never do to her what she is doing to me, namely, psychological torture. However I am starting to wonder if boarding schools take them this young.
If all else fails, I'll move in with Tootsie.
