Rose…Rosi..Rosa…Rosita…just a few of the nick names for this furry, little ball of bliss that has lit up our life over the last month. Doesn’t really make you want to go have that morning cup of tea or coffee, does it:)
One year The Bennett’s (family away from family) decided it would be the perfect gift for Christmas to introduce us into the world of pets. Mind you…I had three LITTLE ones at the time…none of which were capable of feeding or cleaning up after themselves, let alone a hamster, but we were thankful nonetheless. We really wanted to love him, squeeze him, and name him George…but after two days of trying to hold him that resulted in bites and a couple dropping mishaps (no injuries), we decided it was best to wait until we were more grown up and could handle such a beast, and gave them to a friend. Fast forward about 4 years. This is it… the perfect time to get our first real pet (fish and frogs don’t count because we couldn’t squeeze them). In walks Keeta into our life…so innocent and peaceful looking.
We knew immediately that is was the right timing, she filled a void we didn’t even know was there, and she enhanced the love in the household 10 folds. Just like that, our craving for expansion was quenched….for about 2 years;) You know the story, once you get one pet….it’s very hard to come home from the pet store without a new pet. I think I will blame the new found obsession with hamsters on those damn Zhu Zhu pets! Jalena is very similar to me in that she gets something in her head that she wants and the persistence is relentless! We told her that it was horrible timing with summer coming because we were going to be traveling and no one would be able to take care of it and love it. It didn’t buy us much more time though. We told her that she had to do some research…what kinds of hamsters are the best for kids, how do you hold them, what do you feed them, what cages are the best, etc. Well, she just surfed the web and within hours she was giving me nothing less than a power point presentation with all the info I needed and more. I was so proud of her diligence and I couldn’t take it anymore…now I wanted a hamster…Jake didn’t stand a chance at this point. So Happy Birthday to Lou…Let the adventure begin…
Rose Present from Kathy Carlisle on Vimeo.
After 3 pet stores and looking through about 10 different species, we settled on a Dwarf, Winter White, little ray of light. Jalena decided to name her after her Grandma Rose that she loved very much. Now comes
….the rest of the story.
It started as an odd, but beautiful (maybe a little too obsessed now looking back) relationship between Tiny Rose and Goliath Keeta. Every chance Keeta could get to smell every crevasse of the fragile cage, she would.
They would always go nose to nose and appear to talk through energy. I was sure that Rose was asking her to get her out of the cage. Well, after exactly one month (and a day) of us taking every precaution not to ever leave the door open to the room we kept Rose in, and never let them have unsupervised visits, our fateful day came. We were going on a trip to Lacey, WA and our friend Aaron was going to get the kids off to school for us. I took Rose out of the guest room and put her in the studio so her antics wouldn’t keep him awake. Jake and I worked on the computers until late and walked out like zombies not even noticing that we left the door open…not to mention Keeta’s door….oh, yeah you can see it coming. A mugshot tells the rest of the story…
What we think was originally suppose to be a rescue mission….turned horribly wrong and resulted in an accidental murder:( From the looks of the crime scene, it appears that Keeta attempted a rescue, and in their aggressive celebration, Rose was crushed. Something told me to go check my email one last time before we took off, so I came into the studio and sat down (didn’t even see the catastrophe in the room). I heard Keeta nudge the cage and knew in a second…to look back and see if the shock I was feeling had truth to it. There was the cage, knocked off the chair…I couldn’t even take it all in…looked at Keeta and gasped and as if she knew what she had done, she coward out of the room.
And then I saw her…sweet Rose…lifeless on the ground, covered in slobber. My first reaction is always to cry for Jake but I didn’t expect to have blame be the next reaction. I said, “Jake, Keeta killed Rose!”
“What?”
“You left the door open and Keeta killed Rose!” (Basically…I told him that ‘he’ killed Rose)
His shoulders dropped and he went running up to the studio to assess the situation. Later it dawned on me and we laughed together about my blaming tactics and shock that I was in. I got a little too close to that little bugger:(
You are not going to believe this….
As I was just writing this Jake came in and started reading. Then Keeta came in and I started to interrogate her for fun. It went like this…
“Keeta..where is Rose? What happened to your friend? What did you do?”
Then she turns and walks over to the crime scene. She sniffs and picks up a piece of corn. She licks it, caresses it with her jowls, tosses it into the air…then I say ” then what”….and RIGHT on cue…she whacks it with her paw and looks at it. HOLY $%^@! Jake and I are trippin’ out and laughing hysterically! She just played out the whole scene and I think that she is innocent. She was playing with her and it turned into a Mice Of Men story.
I will save the rest of the story for another post (because it gets a little more sad with telling the kids and what not) and I will post Jake’s conversation with Lou when he had to tell her. But today we are celebrating this little fallen soldier’s life;(
Rose’s first playdate with Sunday. Kimber came over with her hamster to show us how to handle them and love them. She gave Lou bravery…well until Sunday BIT Laney (ultimately bonding her with Rose).
Good-bye sweet Rose. Thank you for blessing our life and teaching us to be in the moment (instead of fearing a chomp on our fingers), and for loving us. We are so sorry that Keeta loves so HARD…she hurts us with her love sometimes as well:)
