Dear Dr Pickering,
There are ways in which hamsters can prove detrimental to human well-being (mostly by trying one's patience when they disappear behind radiators or shred the Sunday newspaper before you've read it), but over the past four decade
s no small child I have heard of has contracted "severe diarrhoea, fever and stomach cramps" – or indeed salmonella – from handling one, as your new study says they have a slight risk of doing.
And, like most Britons raised in the 1970s, my siblings, friends and I have known a lot of hamsters: Barry, Fifi, Hammy, Harriet, Smudge, Fudge, Colin and Dinky are but a pawful of those that lived like kings in the Hunter household (don't even get me started on the guinea pigs…).
The reality is that hamster ownership brings with it more valuable life lessons than it does disadvantages or health risks.
Firstly and fundamentally, show a small child that fist-sized ball of fluff with the chubby paws and beseeching eyes and watch him or her instantly fall in love and want to connect with the creature. (There will, I admit, be rare instances where a child's first instinct on meeting the only living thing in the house that's smaller and more helpless than himself is to torture it, in which case parents should quickly consult a psychiatrist.)
Yet where an already overburdened mother may sigh and roll her eyes at the prospect of filling water bottles and topping up bowls of sunflower seeds daily, as well as skipping out a cage full of wee-soaked sawdust and miniscule poos on a weekly basis, a small child sees it as a labour of love and proof of his own 'parenting' skills. The child will learn that a pet's basic needs – food, shelter, warmth, affection – are like his own, yet must be tended to differently. This way he develops consideration for others, realising that he is not the centre of the universe (except to his hamster, being as he is the source of everything it needs to stay alive).
As the relationship progresses, the child will come to realise that dexterity, cunning and anticipation are also important qualities for hamster owners to nurture. No matter how tightly they believe the cage has been secured, the little critter with his extremely flexible body will find a way to wriggle (or gnaw) to freedom. Given that hamsters are most active at dawn and dusk (and sometimes, if you're really unlucky, in the dead of night), chances are they will be doing their Houdini act when the humans in the house are either winding down for the evening, or emerging dozily from the arms of Morpheus after eight hours' kip.
Luckily, children are usually pretty small and bendy themselves, so should have no problem diving and squirming under beds and behind sofas, clambering on top of wardrobes and changing direction every three seconds, arms extended and eyes alert, to catch the escapee. Think how well it will prepare them for the rugby field, the tennis court and the inevitable tyranny of the school playground and the workplace in later years.
Diplomacy will also be learned, for example when a furious parent has had to dismantle an armchair in order to retrieve the hamster that went too far in search of biscuit crumbs; or when, say, an older sister's school textbooks were placed on top of a hamster cage by a thoughtless owner, in hope of securing the door, but the sharp-toothed rodent simply chewed through the Cambridge Latin Course and got out anyway. (Yes, you know who you are…)
Then, of course, there is the lesson of loss and grief. The only certainty in life is death and, while irrefutably sad, the demise of a small creature at the end of its average two-year lifespan is a manageable trauma for a child and will stand him in good stead for life's harder knocks. After the tender conversation about eternal sleep and hamster heaven, you can take the bereaved but newly philosophical child to the pet shop and show him 50 more hamsters, any of whom he may take home and befriend. What better metaphor for the circle of life than a squeaky hamster wheel in perpetual motion? Don't take it away from us, please.
Jackie Hunter
The full article contains 767 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
