Tychicus

My hamster is dead.

Two days ago I skipped class to do some badly-needed cleaning around the house, starting with the turd-sprinkled hamster cage. Strangely, I'd come to enjoy the process of cleaning his cage, of improving the life of the creature I love. After removing the black mesh top and engaging in the perfunctory chase, beneath the water bottle and through the cardboard tunnel and behind the plastic green wheel, I scooped up my wriggling pet and stuffed him into his little plastic running ball. He kept running into my feet and legs as I removed the elements of his cage and scooped out his shavings with the leaf of a cardboard box. I giggled as he rammed into my calf again, and with my phone I videotaped him as he hurtled around the room. I was playing a Paul Simon cd that my stepfather bought me for Christmas and sang "Love Me Like A Rock" to him as he careened around the apartment.

He'd been warming up to his plastic ball more and more. At first he would get pissed about being in there and would scritch and scratch at the plastic wall, the same wall with the air slit that he had just deposited a turd into. But he slowly and clearly began to learn the layout of our apartment. Once he got out from the couches in the living room and into the kitchen, he had a merry time careening at thrice the speed across the linoleum, ramming into cabinets and baseboards when he couldn't stop fast enough on the slick surface.

After completing his cage, I went and scrubbed the bathroom sink and left him in his ball, the sounds of his collisions keeping me company. By the time I came out of the bathroom he'd had enough and was scritching at the wall, looking like he was trying to dig that turd out he'd just laid. I popped open the top of his ball and shook him back into his new cage, and left him to reorient himself and redig his customary tunnels, both an entrance and an exit to his burrow in the front left corner of the cage. The corner where I always found the most turds and stashed food, piled together indiscriminately.

I came home today feeling sad. Part of my bedtime routine, especially when I felt down, was to wake Tychicus up and play with him. One of my favorite things to do was clamp my hands around him so he was completely enclosed, and giggle at the tickling sensation of his nose testing the space between each of my fingers for escape. I always left a tiny opening by my thumb and forefinger, which he would shove his little head through until his eyes bulged and his scrabbling front paws emerged. He would always come out looking windswept from the tight squeeze. Then he would run up and down my forearms until I decided to do it all over again.

Tonight, I walked in the door and went straight to his cage. I lifted off the lid and tilted it against the back of the couch, as I always do. He wasn't out and about, but 10:00 p.m. is still pretty early for the nocturnal little guy. So, per usual, I started poking at the front left corner of his cage, which always is replied with a rustling and scrabbling out one of the tunnels.

There was no rustling. I poked and poked all along the left side of the cage, checked his tunnel, and poked by the mostly-undisturbed food dish. Nothing. Panic's seed began to sprout when I remembered staying up late the night before and not seeing him wake up before I went to bed. Dave made a comment as I dug through the shavings on the left side of the cage and touched fur. And the fur didn't move. Panic blossomed as I scraped the shavings away from the top of his back; Dave asked a question I can't remember, I couldn't respond, I heard his footsteps, and all I could see was that my hamster was not moving and the smell of something wrong filled my face.

I immediately sat down on my stool and began to sob. Dave tentatively tapped on the glass next to his body, and murmured, "Oh, poor guy." I bawled for several minutes, my palms stuffed into my leaking eye sockets. I couldn't look at my hamster and I couldn't think. Dave sat on the couch arm next to me and rubbed my shoulders and back.

"I was already feeling sad, too!" I spluttered.

"What did you feel sad about?" he asked as he pulled me into his shoulder.

I gasped twice and my face muscles puckered as I wailed, "I DID A GOOD JOB, DAVE, I DID A GOOD JOB TAKING CARE OF HIM!"

I shoved my body under his left arm, and continue to sob about how I fed him and how I just cleaned his cage and, Dave, I tried so hard! I did a good job! "You did, you did a good job taking care of him," he murmured down to me as a spoke through my tear-wet palms, my forehead pressed into his thighs. I felt so foolish but I couldn't help feeling so sad.

After the wailing subsided into wavering , he gently looked down at me and asked, "How do you want to bury him? Do you want me to do it, or do you want to help?"

"I want to help," I whispered. "Can we find a box, or at least something to wrap him in?"

He poked through the closet and drawers until I saw a small box that once held 25 20-gauge shotgun shells. It was perfect. When I pointed it out, Dave dumped the empty shells that had been inside and tenderly lined the box with a folded paper towel.

I didn't want to see my hamster's dead face. I thought - what if he had died a gruesome death? Would his bowels have evacuated all over his beautiful furry body? Could that have caused the smell? Tears swelled in my throat as Dave pulled on his boots and I went to the cage.

I tentatively scraped back the shavings. He still looked beautiful and perfect, soft and unsoiled. His tiny pink feet were tucked underneath, curled in wakeless sleep, and his glossy black eyes were restfully closed. His whiskers were still wiry and his fur was still soft. Had it not been for the smell and the unnatural cold of his belly, I would've doubted myself. I gently tucked him into the cradle of the paper towel, but left him visible, regardless of the wrongness of his smell. Dave trooped out the back door with me and locked it behind us.

He went to the garage to retrieve a shovel from the trunk of the car. I sat on the two concrete steps of our back stoop and looked down at my poor little pet, resisting an urge to protect him from the early March cold. I ran a knuckle over the downy softness of his back as tears blurred the world again. I looked up miserably as Dave returned with the shovel, the sound of the garage door grinding closed behind him.

He walked around the south side of the stoop, pacing awkwardly. "Where do you want to put him?" A couple of clusters of daffodil sprouts were poking up through the inhospitable ground. He indicated a spot between the last two clusters closest to the stoop and I nodded. His shovel bit into the mud, and I looked down at the tiny body in my hands. "I'm sorry," I whispered as Dave chopped through roots and ladeled half-frozen mud out of the shallow grave. Maybe eight inches down he ran into some rocks. He looked up and gently asked, "Is this deep enough?" I nodded.

I held out the box for him to have one last look at Tychicus, our first pet together, his perfect present to me for our first wedding anniversary, and he peered in and nodded, lips flat and eyes soft. My lips pursed and my chest heaved as I folded the paper towel over my little hamster, the last time I'll ever see him, and carefully tucked in the flaps on the lid of the box. I placed the box flat in the bottom of the hole, and watched Dave refill it with the black earth. I wondered whether I should put a shovelful in, but by that the time the tiny hole was already filled. He broke up the earthen clumps and gently patted the ground flat. I picked up a piece of nearby bark, a little bigger than my hand, and shoved it into the ground as a grave marker.

We stood there for a minute in the cold, and I laughed awkwardly. It was obvious neither of us really knew whether we should say something or not. So I gave Dave a crooked smile when he looked at me and we went inside. I shed my coat and boots and mumbled about washing my hands. I was sad, because that was the last time I'd ever get to hold him, and he smelled like death. I scrubbed my hands twice, our soap dispenser nearly out of the liquid orange Dial soap, as the tears welled up and spilt over again. Dave came behind me and put his arms around me, as my wet hands rested on the sink's white porcelain edge.

We moved from the bathroom to the living room. Dave sat on the far side of the love seat and opened his left arm for me to come in. I drove my face into the olive-colored cotton covering his stomach and whimpered softly. He held me as the emotions worked through me, running their course like the flu, and we talked a little. We prayed for a little while, and we talked about how much we liked him, and about death, and about getting another hamster. At one point he said, "I know it sounds coarse, but there's a reason they reproduce so much." I laughed, and knew I was ok then.

After Dave got up to take his sleeping pill before bed, I went to the cage and gently replaced the shavings where Tychicus had lain. I straightened his wheel and reoriented his cardboard tube. I wanted to keep the illusion of his presence, just for a little while. Seeing his cage as I write this, it's easy to imagine he's just fast asleep beneath the shavings. I wish he were.

Thank you, Dave, for Tychicus. And thank you for being the best when he died. I am so lucky.