The Rodent Not Taken

The other day, my wife and I were sitting outside on the patio when our twin 11-year-old daughters came out and asked, with serious looks on their faces, if they could talk to us. They had a proposal, they said, and wanted us to listen to the idea fully before we said "no." I sighed and nodded, knowing that anything that has to be introduced that way is probably not something we're going to agree to.

They wanted hamsters. It made perfect sense. They could keep them in their rooms and take care of them, and besides, all their older brothers had hamsters at some point or another, and they had never had a pet, and it really wasn't fair, and if we loved them, we'd…

The rest of the spiel ran roughly in the same direction, practicality with just a touch of guilt for seasoning, and I sat looking patient and paternal, waiting until they were completely finished before I would say, with just a little bit of satisfaction, "No!"

I actually have a list, entitled "Talking Kids out of Hamsters," prepared for this situation and was ready to roll it out. I've been working on it for years. (You are welcome to use this list on your own kids in a pet crisis.)

We can't get them hamsters because:

1. Hamsters are messy and kick their cedar bedding out of their cages and onto the floor, where it gets stuck to other things and ends up on your clothes and in your sheets. That's not the problem, of course, as everybody likes the smell of cedar. (Don't you?) The problem is that hamsters poop on the cedar shavings before they kick them out of their cage, so when you have cedar shavings stuck to your pillow, you're actually sleeping with hamster poop on your head.

2. Hamsters, while very cute, are wild animals with razor-sharp fangs and think nothing of biting little kids' fingers off. I grew up with a kid who lost a pinky. (This, of course, is a slight exaggeration. He just had a little slice mark on his hand.)

3. Hamsters have ticks. The ticks will jump off the hamster and bite you, and you will — slowly, but surely — die, wasting away on the couch while watching "SpongeBob." (This may or may not be true, but I know my daughters are scared of ticks, so this will probably be very effective.)

4. Remember when you're promising to clean up after them that hamsters store food in their cheeks for days, where it gets soggy and smelly. Then they spit it out in the corner of the cage. It's the only thing worse than poopy cedar shavings.

5. Hamsters are OK by themselves, but if you put two of them together, they will fight to the death. (Be careful. This one works well with daughters, who aren't interested in pets that kill, but will probably make boys even more eager to get hamsters.)

6. Hamsters spend all day sleeping and all night running on a wheel and trying to get out of the cage. If they're successful, it's your job to find them before they starve to death or meet up with the family dog.

7. You won't clean up the cage yourself. You will leave it for me to do, and frankly, at this stage in my life, I don't have any interest in handling poopy cedar shavings or spit-out food.

8. Hamsters die. Then you have to bury them out back, and everyone cries and feels sad, and then the family dog comes trotting up to the house a day later covered in dirt with a dead hamster in his mouth.

As my daughters finished up their very persuasive presentation, I was all ready to unload my list on them (To be fair, I'd only get halfway through it before they stomped off to their rooms.) when my wife interrupted.

"You want hamsters?" my wife asked. "You really want hamsters? Let's go get hamsters!"

The girls both erupted in cheers, and my wife motioned for me to get up out of my chair. I stayed put.

"Come on," my wife said. "You can tell them all about your little list on the way to the pet store."

source : news.yahoo.com