Hundreds of years ago, beneath the wheat fields of Kazakhstan, Phodopus sungorus (the winter white dwarf hamster) hastily prepares for winter. Foraging for moss and animal wool, it makes delicate trips outside of its burrow, whiskers vibrating, nose damp with curiosity. Under the pulsing stars of a Central Asian night, the hamster knows nothing of tomorrow, yet its coat of fur insists on clairvoyance, whitening with the knowledge of another passing year.
Today, amidst a summer heat wave, I too prepare a housewarming. In a few hours, I will welcome my very first pet into my life. Since childhood, I have dreamed of owning a hamster, fantasized about the presence of soft, small things. I’m not sure what initially drew me to them. Was it their cuteness? Probably. Or maybe it was their adaptability, their stubbornness in the face of a much larger, harsher world. Was it the same scientific nosiness that first led Soviet scientists to form laboratory colonies of hamsters, even as they worked to detonate nuclear bombs?
In any circumstance, I was thwarted in my desires to have my very own hamster due to my growing up in Maui, Hawaii, where a careful attention to the native environment prohibited the importing of invasive species. Still, amidst the cawing of tropical birds and the glistening waves of the sea, I longed for this strange mammalian creature, and I longed to call it mine.
When I lifted him out of his transport carrier, holding him for the first time, he felt like a jumble of disconnected bones in a bag of silky fur. He was pliable in a way I didn’t expect, a squirming ball of life that was wholly dependent on me. I held the weight of obligation in my hands, which felt tantamount to love.
In the coming days, I would bear witness to the beauty of a hamster’s daily rituals and would learn his likes (frog-shaped ceramic hide, millet, wheel) and dislikes (carrots, intruding fingers, cage cleanings). I would watch him warm up to me, to the rhythms of my voice and the particulars of my movements. We would become great friends.
And yet, for me at least, there was the ever-present awareness that this would not last, of that pesky lifespan statistic of 1-2 years. Each time I rejoiced in his lightning-fast running speed or the way he would run up to me, putting his paws on the edge of his cage, I grieved a little. And I worried — would something happen to him that would shorten his already short lifespan? Disease, freak accident? Would my care be adequate, By Maile Adams ’27 would my attentiveness to his vulnerability be enough to save him? I knew, at the back of my mind, that it wouldn’t. And so I learned the lessons that tending to a fragile life would teach.
The Chinese zodiac has coined this year (the year before my senior year of college) the year of the horse, which feels apt to me as I wander through the country roads surrounding my neighborhood. Summer in Virginia brings a flurry of mystical brown dust as the crops begin to crisp and dry in the valley, the whole earth thirsting for rain. Horses gallop while cows graze in the pastures, their necks bowing toward the ground, nuzzling at intermittent grasses.
But this year, I will be conscious of a much smaller animal, one who has led me deeper into humility. This year, I will find myself praying, more often than not, “God, make me small.” This is my year of the hamster.