Harvey Hamster

Harvey HamsterMood: energeticNow Playing: Chinese WhispersTopic: Chinese Mouse
"Hi, my name is Harvey the Naughty Chinese Harvest Hamster. If my owner was bright enough to scan + add my mugshot, it would be right here↓→."
Okay I've let the mouse speak. I've always been one for pets of the rodent variety from syrian hamsters (the big tubby ones) to "fancy" mice, Campbell's Condensed Russians to Winter White Dwarves (the last two are practically the same).
Harvey is still a baby. He was sold to me as a girl and I'm glad I double-checked their facts just for my own information. Girl hammies have 2 holes close together; boy hammies have 2 pink dots further apart. Eventually as they mature they develop unfeasably large testicles à la Buster Gonad from Viz magazine. (A hamster's testes are as big or bigger than his head!!)
Being a baby he still sleeps a lot of the time. I have to say that from the minute I bought him he is the tamest pet I've ever had. While his cagemate pinged violently from corner to corner, Harvey just at still on my hand, peering goodnaturedly at the action. (Hamsters, mice & rats are extremely shortsighted, hence the old expression mouse sight, meaning "myopic".
Because they dislike direct light (even lamplight), I put fireglow bulbs in mine. Little rodents can't see by this so to him it's near pitch darkness when the room is lit a peaceful red. His ears prick up to the max and he pings to & fro up my arms to shoulders and down again — 5am being peak time for him. By daylight he is tucked up in bed and practically unrouseable.
As I say, a Chinese hamster is nothing like a tubby Syrian hammy. For one thing, he's about a quarter of the size and a tenth of the weight (if that). He does look to all intents and purposes like a mouse with a 2cm twiddly tail & black stripe down his back. His fur is "ticked" all over (ie. black-grey-brown) and a far richer colour than the ordinary house mouse's dull coat. His tummy is white with black undercoat. With his big poppy eyes he looks more like a European woodmouse than anything else. And as the websites say, he does hug my finger with all fours, just like an English harvest mouse. (hence the nickname).
Harvey is called a hammy not a mouse because he does occasionally use cheek pouches. But they're never enormously packed to overflowing like the golden hamsters' of my childhood. Plus (another oddness) — he will not run the wheel. Even when I hooked it over the side of a chair three feet up so he's nowhere to go but round the wheel, he spent most of the 20 mins peering down at the fallbreaking pillows I'd arranged below, wondering if a grand leap to freedom was worth the risk. When I did persuade him to tread the wheel, with coaxing: "come on, come on!" he did it so gingerly and unenthusiastically I eventually let him down. Never in my life have I met another hamster who hated wheels!
Well that's enough about Harvey. He's currently drinking from a Coke bottle lid because his waterbottle's broken, so I'm going out to get a new one now.
L8Rs,
G.
Posted by gledwood at 3:02 PM GMT
Updated: Monday, 4 December 2006 7:13 PM GMT