Picture it: It’s the day before Thanksgiving. Adelaide is playing with a ZhuZhu pet – a fuzzy little brown hamster with wheeled battery-powered feet. She’s holding him and letting him run around on the floor, over the couch, up my leg and (I should’ve seen it coming) onto my head.
The hamster is running.
The wheels are turning, and they are turning fast.
His little wheeled feet wrap my curly frizzy hair around them 30 times in 3 seconds. That hamster winches himself down flat against my head before I even know what has happened.
Do you understand what I am saying? I have a hamster attached to my head.
The little sucker is not about to come off. He is hopelessly entangled right on top of my head.
I scream. Then I cry (yes, I know, I’m an adult, but it hurts!) Adelaide and Jedidiah point at me and laugh. I send them to their rooms. I know I have to think fast, and having a four-year-old and a two-year-old laughing and pointing at me doesn’t help my ability to concentrate.
Now I’m alone in my predicament and I try to assess the situation. Not only is the constant pressure slowly yanking my hair out by the roots, but the battery compartment is stuck down so tight against my scalp that I can’t pull it away even the tiniest fraction of an inch (which would probably be enough to turn the thing off.) So not only is it yanking my hair out, it’s getting hotter and hotter by the minute because the battery is still engaged.
I consider my options.
If I yank it out, I’ll have a bald spot on top of my head.
If I cut it loose, I’ll have a sticky-up cowlick for months.
I can’t break his feet off because they are too close to my head.
The reality seems to be that I have a smoldering rodent permanently ensnarled in my hair.
I look in the mirror. I can’t help but laugh. I’m crying and laughing at the same time because a) it hurts, and b) I look absolutely absurd. I look like a crazed serial killer. Apparently, head vermin make you go insane fairly quickly.
I don’t know what else to do. I give up and call in the cavalry (to wit, my husband.) He can barely understand what I’m telling him through my hysterical sobbing and maniacal laughter. All he hears on his cell phone is “hair,” “hamster,” “help,” “hurts!” and “ridiculous.”
Yes, my husband actually has to come home from work and save me from a hamster.
He calms me down (somehow he does it without laughing) and sets to work on my head with several kinds of pliers and a screwdriver.
My hero dismembers and guts the offending rodent of its batteries. It proudly holds onto its trophy, though: a big hairball around one little wheeled leg.
Only I, who already have pretty much every weird phobia in the world, could be attacked and subdued by a ZhuZhu pet.
Look out, folks: It’s a Hamster Holiday.
from my 12-2-12 article for www.mentorpatch.com
