Shu

Recently, Weiwei bought two little russian hamsters: Tom and Jerry. She hides them under the bench in the lab, totally against all lab rules, but she does keep the cage and everything very clean so they dont give any risk on contaminations and they dont bother anybody. Better, they became a real attraction in the lab; everybody comes to visit the cute little guys! They are brothers but sometimes we get the feeling they are too nice with eachother as it seems like they are kissing. They sleep in the same little wooden house, under a blanket of toilet paper. However some days they have arguments and one of the two boys will move out of the little wooden house and sleep in a corner of the cage. Thankfully it doesnt take long before they kiss and make up and the poor fellow that was left homeless is allowed to move all his toilet paper back in with the other guy. Every week we weigh the hamsters, to see how fast they gain weight. Weiwei feeds them well and on regular time-points, but they were babies when she got them and now they are becoming fat teenagers, so its important to follow up on their development. It became the event of the week for the whole lab: everybody passes by in the morning to write their bet on the blackboard. The one that gets closest to the real weight of each hamster, wins half a dollar.
So when we got to the lab the other day, we found a paper on the desk, with a picture of a very cute hamster. It turned out Demo had found the paper and put it on our desk. The guy who wrote the note explained he is going to France for a post-doc and cannot take his pet with him overseas as its a very old animal that will likely not survive such a long journey. So he was looking for a new family for his hamster. We decided to email this guy and ask him if he found someone already or if he needed help with her or so. But turned out the guy was really desperate already as he was leaving 2 days later to France. So the hamster had nowhere to go and I took her to my flat. Its a giant hamster!!!! Never seen such a big one, almost the size of a guinea pig. She is very very sweet and clean, and very soft. The house that the guy had for her was depressingly small so together with Martina, I build her a really big cage. We bought a wooden house for her and a wheel (both sized for rats or guinea pigs) and she seems alot happier. I decided to name her ‘Shu’, after her previous owner.The picture here is the only picture I got left of her now, as my laptop got stolen. Its a really bad picture, very sad, ready to publish for animal rights, but believe me she is happy with us!!! She runs around in the house in her plastic ball (sadly she always pees on the carpet) and she is very fond of playing with Craig on the sofa.