Hamster Space Mission: A Terribly True Tale of The Wise Wolf's Childhood Antics
WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
This morning I woke up at 3:00 a.m. because the air conditioner in my motel room is broken. The elderly woman in the next room is from a tropical nation known for being extremely hot, and she must be terribly homesick because she has her thermostat cranked up so high that the drywall is visibly sweating. If I could somehow manipulate gravity to the point where I could manage to crack an egg open against the wall, it would fry instantly like a hot pan.
(Boy, wouldn’t that be funny if I could actually manipulate gravity like that. But I am not a solar-system-sized cosmic horror incarnated as a man, so I can’t.)
I actually thought this as I lay there in bed. It was a strange thought, but then again, I am a strange man.
I grabbed my laptop and loaded up Substack to see how many paid subscribers cancelled already today. That seems to be how things operate now here at The Wise Wolf since I started making fun of both Democrat and Republican politicians, calling both sides out for being insufferably corrupt putzes who are far more concerned with their bank accounts than the nation they are being paid to manage.
While racking my brain for something funny I could post about the Hanta Virus because my social media feed was completely blown up with memes, I remembered some silly garbage about an old Japanese Anime cartoon I used to watch as a kid called Hamtaro.
Okay, fine, I was in my teens and had no business watching this show. Sue me. I was still a kid at heart, so it counts.
It is a cute show that features a cute hamster named Hamtaro who goes on cute adventures with his cute hamster friends. I really loved the animation style and lighthearted appeal of the show, and it got me thinking about when I actually WAS a child, specifically the terrible, horrible events of my fifth-grade summer.
This rocket possessed a cargo payload capsule and a parachute recovery system. It just so happened to be the perfect size and shape to fit a live rodent inside. It also just so happened that my sister owned a hamster that had decided its only purpose in life was to constantly run on a plastic orange wheel that squeaked with every single revolution. I could hear it clearly through the paper-thin walls of my family’s old trailer home. Nonstop, all day, every day, the wheel went squeak, squeak, squeak.
My sister was away attending some sort of summer day camp activity thing where normal, well-adjusted children go to hang out with other normal, well-adjusted children. My mom was, as usual, too busy cleaning or doing dishes or crying in the bathroom because she had been tricked or perhaps threatened into marrying my father.
This was my time to shine…
I had been planning this operation for several days. My grandmother had recently bought me this cool NASA t-shirt and a matching NASA-emblazoned little boy ballcap. It was a strange dichotomy growing up in a trailer directly across the street from my grandparents’ mansion. For example, I wore hand-me-down clothes, but I had a $3,000 computer that Grandma bought me for my birthday.
If memory serves me correctly, my sister’s hamster was literally named “Hamster.” I snuck into her bedroom, popped open the latch of the little golden-colored cage, and reached in to pick him up. I made sure that he was in peak physical condition from his months of rigorous training on the squeaky wheel. Hamster passed my intensive pre-flight physical examination, and it was time to prepare for launch.
The rocket was already set up in the yard. The yellow plastic launch system, featuring a three-foot-tall metal post that allowed the rocket to rest on the launchpad via a little plastic guidance tube, was waiting and ready for our reluctant astronaut. I want to point out right now that I was not doing this to be cruel. I was a kid. I was stupid. I figured, “Well, I want to go to space in a rocket, so clearly a hamster would also want to do the same if given the opportunity.”
Yes, I was an idiot back then, and honestly, I still am.
The payload system was fairly advanced considering the rocket itself was basically a two-foot-tall toilet paper tube covered in stickers to make it look like a Saturn V. It featured a transparent capsule that would eject after the second-stage rocket engine died off somewhere around 3,000 feet in the air. Upon ejection and freefall, a tertiary micro-rocket—which through arcane means I am not at liberty to discuss due to NASA security clearance issues—would pop off, a tiny set of orange and white parachutes would deploy, and the capsule would slowly drift back to Earth.
There, a dedicated team of hamster medical professionals and top-tier scientists (okay, it was just me) would rush to collect our intrepid hero. We would whisk him away to the waiting paparazzi who would photograph his triumphant return to terra firma.
He would spend the next several years doing television interviews and the college lecture circuit, and he would be called a “hero” by anyone and everyone for the rest of his days.
However, this is not how things went.
I loaded Hamster into the capsule. I made sure to pack him a little lunch of sunflower seeds for the trip, and I carefully padded him in with toilet paper to cushion his little hamster body from the massive amount of G-forces he was about to endure. Thankfully, Hamster was in peak physical condition after months of running on that blasted wheel nonstop all freaking day and half the damn night, so I was highly confident that he would return safely.
He did not return safely.
I am not entirely certain of the exact medical physics involved, but I am fairly sure that the hamster actually died of a heart attack mid-flight while the rocket engines were still blasting. He was perfectly stiff upon landing, and it was not from rigor mortis. It was too soon. I think it was from the pure shock of having just been launched at 100 miles per hour into the stratosphere by some towering, hulking giant in a device that his little hamster brain could not have possibly understood.
When I recovered the capsule and saw that he was dead, I immediately freaked out and went into full-on panic mode. My dad was a violent drunk who would beat me for any reason he could find. I knew that if my sister found out I had just murdered her pet while larping as a NASA aerospace engineer, my hide would be thoroughly tanned until the first day of school came around in September. I had to figure out a cover-up, and I had to do it fast.
Luckily, my friend a few houses down owned several hamsters and had been begging me for weeks to loan him a copy of my favorite Super Nintendo game. I hopped on my bicycle and high-tailed it down the street with the game cartridge in my back pocket, pounding furiously at his front door.
He answered, and I screamed, “I NEED A HAMSTER!” with tears streaming down my cheeks. He had absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about and looked at me with an expression of pure bewilderment. Then, I pulled out my copy of Final Fantasy III and said, “I WILL GIVE YOU THIS FOR ONE OF YOUR HAMSTERS.”
That was all I needed to say. No questions asked. Done deal.
I went back home as fast as my little legs could pedal. I snuck into my sister’s room, put the replacement hamster in place, closed the little golden cage trapdoor, and then walked out into the woods behind my Grandma’s house to hold a hero’s funeral for the little astronaut.
It was a very humbling moment for me. I had never been the cause of the death of a living being before, other than a few bugs here and there. Hamster’s stiff, soft little body lay there in a small plastic sewing kit box that I had turned into a makeshift coffin. I felt so bad. I cried. I didn’t want to hurt this little guy. I just wanted him to be a hero. I wanted him to be able to do what I wanted to do myself, which was to go to space and see the stars up close and personal with his own two little black hamster eyes. Instead, all I did was end his little life prematurely.
I don’t know what made me think of this today, but I am sitting here at this motel desk on my laptop typing this, and a part of me feels like crying all over again over this little, twenty-plus-years-dead, thirty-dollar pet store hamster who was the first, and probably only, hamster astronaut in the history of our neighborhood.
I learned something valuable that day. I learned that death is real, that it stalks every single one of us, and that good intentions can often lead to terrible results.
This was my story. If this article does well, I might talk about some other life experiences that I have been wanting to get off my chest.
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P.S. My sister never figured out that I had swapped out her hamster with a fraud.
Help keep The Wise Wolf crying.
Doing dumb stuff and dealing with the consequences of one’s actions is part of growing up. It is amazing how few parents these days realize this basic concept.
You are truly human. And truly wise. I’m curious about how your sister turned out. It’s obvious you turned ok. Thanks so much for the laugh, I had tears running down my face.