Squeal Box Square Pants

Meet Tiger Ver. 2!

Breed: Winter White Sapphire Dwarf Hamster
Gender: Male
Weight: 21g
Age: 3 weeks
Hobby: Squealing

Tiger is sort of a Ver. 2 coz we used to call Penelope 'Tiger' when the shopkeeper mistakenly told us that she is a 'male'. It was almost 3 months later that it hit me that our little 'boy' is not growing any bigger and to check down there! Funny thing is that she will always pee when I let her out to roam around (we call her the free range chicken coz she doesn't like to walk around in an enclosure) - which only ceased after we acknowledged her as a girl and gave her an appropriate girlie name. I really believe that animals can communicate with us, if only we are sharp enough to catch it. Anyway, here is a very helpful link with picture to help those who are dazed & confused identify the sex of their hamster : How-to-tell-hamster-sex

Tiger is quite another story altogether. He has only been with us for 5 days. (And yes, he is confirmed a male.) He is the 5-star communicator type - extremely 'expressive', especially in telling us that he is not too happy with the level of service around here. Some of his 'feedbacks' include : 1) Please do not remove the roof top to peek at him. Even a pipsqueak needs some privacy. 2) Please refrain your big face from his beady view when he has just awoken up and doesn't recognise you coz it gives him a rude shock. Another clue that you are definitely not the 'Good Morning' face he is looking for - unless you happen to look like a giant sunflower seed with hair. 3) Resist 'accidentally' touching his little furry paws as he climbs the bars (no matter how cute and tempting they look). 4) Do not make fun of his bat-ham pointy ears. It is just that his little body has not caught up with them yet.

Here is an evidence of the squeal-box (hamster version of a boom box). Yup, he doesn't squeak but squeal! In fact, I have never heard a hamster squeal like him before. He is definitely the first. Anyway, enjoy the video and don't worry - no human was harmed in the making of this video.

P.S. If you have a hamster that squeals like this, please feel free to enlighten me about the squealing.

Video taking too long to load? Click Here!

Organic Food for your Hamsters

Organic food means that the use of conventional non-organic pesticides, insecticides and herbicides is greatly restricted. Organic food is gaining more popularity over the years and even hamster food has gone organic. Currently, not many pet shops offer organic food for hamsters, and those that offer these are normally homemade. A few years ago, I got my first batch of organic hamster food through a hamster enthusiast (she has a hamstery in her office!). I have since progress to mixing my own organic hamster food since it also allows me to be more flexible with the ingredients. The receipe is very simple :

(1) Oats (protein, soluble fibre & cholesterol-lowering)
(2) Flax seeds / linseeds (Omega-3, good for their fur)
(3) Hulled millets (vitamin B, magnesium, antioxidants, fibre, calcium)
(4) Plain popcorn or brown rice crackers

Apart from the above, you can also add in other ingredients which you feel might be beneficial to your hamster. However, I do suggest that you do not add any sharp objects to their food as it might impact their delicate cheek pouch. As a precaution, I will also remove all sharp objects found in their commerical food as I once had the experience of having one of my hamsters with an inflammed cheek pouch (curable by a course of antibodies).

In addition to the organic mix, I also add in commercial hamster food to their diet to give them a more balanced diet.

Bon Appetit!

Guess who else is having Supper?

This is Penelope, the baby of the family. In this photo she has the just woken-up look but that doesn't deter her from enjoying her daily breakfast fare which consist of brocoli, baby corn and sweet peas (quite a heavy breakfast for a small gal). A few nights ago, I was checking on her before going to bed. To my horror, there was a cockroach in her food bin. For those of us who doesn't like manhandling creepy crawlies, I have an excellent method of capturing these offending creatures. Just use a plastic tub (another good reason to Recycle-Reduce-Reuse) to capture the bugger - but you must be quick enough. So what do you do after that? Simply, slide a piece of paper underneath, sticky tape carefully the entire circumference of the tub, put the whole thing into a plastic bag and dispose asap! Yeah, I know the bugger is trapped inside but it still never fails to give me that heart thumping rush like a horror movie. Yucks. For illustration purpose, refer to photo below. P.S. kindly note that the cockroach has been substituted by an eraser coz he was no longer available at the time of this photo shoot. P.S. If anyone else have another method of capturing these buggers, please feel free to share.

My Girl - Pebbles

The starlet in this photo is Pebbles - my 1st little girl for dwarf hamsters. She was named after the Flinstones' baby girl and quite rightfully too coz she does behaves like a little cave-girl sometimes (a polite term for barbaric). I adopted her along with a little boy Momo from their previous owner who was too busy to care for them. One of the first thing I realised is that female dwarf hamsters are noticeably smaller in size than the males. We also nicknamed her 'Peanut' because of her body shape and she never seemed to put on weight no matter how much we fed her. I think it was due to her fussy vegan diet (she was strictly vegan and ate only the freshest food! She would snub her nose at any processed food or what she deemed unhealthy snacks). For a hamster, she led a super busy schedule i.e. constantly revolving around her running wheel and doing home improvements. Her calling in life was really fengshui-mistress / interior-designer, coz she was constantly moving her furnitures to the oddest places. Although she was tiny, she had super strength and could move much larger objects like her house quite a distance away. One of her fave things was shredded tissue paper. Whenever I gave her a fresh supply, she would go into a frenzy and start adding them to her nest (it literally looks like a bird's nest). But wait, before the tissue could be added to her precious nest, they must go through the holy ritual of being sanctified - in her cheek pouch! She would then pull them out one-by-one and carefully line her nest. Well, you can imagine what her nest smell like! Hamster aroma therapy anyone? (Warning - Don't try this at home coz I almost fainted once). Once mission completed, she would reside in the middle of it like a contented mother hen. But don't let her demure appearance deceive you, coz she is really quite a rough & tough little girl who is extremely feisty. Another fave activity that I liked to do with her was to scatter organic flax seeds in her cage. She would stand up excitedly like the photo above, to what I imagined is the song - 'It's Raining Men'. She was singing "It's raining seeds! Hallelujiah! - It's raining seeds! Amen! I'm gonna go out to run and let myself get some seeds! It's raining seeds! Every sizes! Tall, fat, round and skinny!"

P.S. Here's a photo of her in one of her tissue nest. Happily nestled in and probably saying "Hey, whacha you looking at?"

P.S. Pebbles fell asleep today, after being here for 2.2 years. She is dearly missed by all at home and will always be our 1st little princess warrior.

Teddy vs Green Eyed Monster from Space!

The hero in question is Teddy the dwarf pudding. Well, he is not exactlly dwarf sized as you can see from the video. At his max he weighs 87g which is pretty heavyweight, since I read somewhere that the average weight for a dwarf winter white is supposed to be 57g. Well, I like to think that he was large because of his Dutch descent. We call him the Giant Dwarf Hamster which is kinda an oxymoron joke. Ok, back to the video - 'Teddy vs the Green Eyed Monster'. The poor monster doesn't stand a chance against him. Actually the monster is a harmless and unwilling opponent dragged out from my brother's display desk to entertain an overly eager and hyper adolescent. Tragically, he has already lost all 3 of his antennas and the last one was ingested by Teddy as seen in the video (gulped!). P.s. Monster has since retired from the DWF (Dwarf Wrestling Federation) and is about to publish his first book entitled 'How I survived the shame of losing my antennas'. I heard it is a very therapeutic read for hair-challenged folks.

Video taking too long to load? Click Here!