Visiting Another Cage

When pets of small children die, some parents tell the children that their pet went to another farm, or something like that, in order to avoid delivering the bad but true news that their beloved pet died.

Well, there are no children in this household, but we're still saying that our Mrs. Choice is "visiting another cage". Yes, Mrs. Choice is dead. It was actually pretty awful! I walked into our room after our date night to the temple, and I see our hamster laying in an unusual position. "Choice, are you dead?" I ask joking, because I always say that to our hamster if he's not moving. When I realized he very well could be, I called to Tom "Hun, I think Choice is dead..."

Tom came running in and looked at Choice, then opened the lid and Choice still hadn't moved...then he nudged him with the wooden tunnel he was laying under, and sure enough....rigamortis.

It was kind of a shocking moment. I mean, I can't say I was heart broken, but just really confused! But because we like to be funny, we dramatized the situation. We placed little Choice in my old phone box and kept him there for the night until we could give him a proper burial.

On Sunday, Kenna joined us and we brought Choice up to a potato field past the temple. It was literally freezing and the wind was being typical of itself, so we didn't want to take a long time. Tom used one of our crappy old pots we're giving to D.I. to bury a hole, and laid the casket inside. We stood around the circle and each tried not to laugh as we 'said a few words'. Then we each dramatically threw a handful of dirt on the casket. Then we completely buried it, though I'm not sure how effective that will be once they begin tilling the ground for post-harvest...don't think about it.

We're sad to have lost Choice after such a short time, but we will not be finding a replacement hamster. We have too much on our plates right now to worry about buying another hamster, and would rather save 'second pet' for a puppy or something. One day...when we get out of here.

But we would like to express public sarcastic thanks to those who expressed sarcastic condolences, and dramatically mourned with us.

R.I.P., Mrs. Choice.