Why I will never own a hamster
When I was fifteen, a random neighbor hired me to babysit for her kid. This was the second, and last time I ever worked for this woman. Little did I know, that I would walk away from that night with one of the grossest stories of my life.
When I arrived, the mother immediately informed me that one of their two hamsters was missing. Apparently, they had escaped from their cage earlier that day and although they had captured one of them, the other one was still at large. The child was distraught and spent most of the night tearing apart the house trying to find the poor thing. Just after dinner, the little girl came running out of her room screaming. She was completely hysterical, screaming something about the hamster that was in the cage.
Apparently, the hamster had gotten its head stuck through the bars of a miniature plastic crib that she had put into the cage as a bed. I immediately concluded that the poor little guy was stuck so tight, that it was too dangerous to attempt a rescue. I decided to wait for her mother to do it, but the little girl was adamant, and when she saw that I wasn’t going to do it, she decided to do it herself. And so she did.
To my horror, as she pulled the hamster’s head free, its eyeball fell out of it’s head and landed on the bedding. It’s FUCKING EYEBALL FELL OUT OF ITS HEAD, YO!!! I almost died. The kids was shrieking at the top of her lungs. I had no idea what to do, but at the time it made sense to remove the animal from the cage. So I moved the hamster (and its eyeball) into a shoebox, I sent the child to bed, and then I paced the house until her mother came home.
Two hours later, the chick stumbled through the door in her stilhettos. I immediately handed her the box and explained what happened. She opened it up and the little one-eyed hamster was just chillin in there, just as happy as can be. But something was missing…
the eye.
The eyeball.
The eyeball was fucking gone.
Where did it go?
There were absolutely no holes in the box. No cardboard flaps to conceal it. There was absolutely no way that the eyeball could have rolled out. She picked up the hamster to inspect it more closely, I presume to see if the eye was stuck to it’s feet. It was not.
Moments later, things pretty much registered for the two of us simultaneously. She grimaced and gently tossed the thing back into the box, and shuddered. I blurted something out about having homework and I bolted for the door. I didn’t even stick around to get paid.
