Phthursday Musings: Stewie
Featuring an interview with an 8 year old
Six weeks ago, the family piled into the car, with a travel cage and a hunk of cucumber, and drove to Huntley, Illinois.
Stewie was waiting.
Stewie did not know he was waiting, of course. Stewie had no idea what was in store for him.
What was in store for him? Months of meticulous planning, involving hours of YouTube watching, extensive interior design work, and at least one curious Etsy order from Lithuania.
July 23 was the day that Stewie came home.
This is Stewie:
This is Stewie, freshly placed in his new home, shortly after arrival:
And here, somehow, is the Instagram reel which with over 1,000 views, meaning that Stewie is the only member of our household to have gone viral.
This interview has been only lightly edited.
META-SPIEL: Hello.
Child: Hello.
What can you tell me about Stewie?
I have no idea.
Who is Stewie?
A hamster.
Which hamster?
A Syrian hamster!
A Syrian hamster? What does that mean?
A ghost Syrian hamster.
What is a Syrian hamster?
It’s a type of hamster.
What other types of hamsters are there?
[wildly rubbing eyes] Robo… Russian dwarf… winter white…
What’s wrong with your eyeballs?
They’re itchy.
What does Stewie do?
He likes to hide a lot.
What else?
I have no idea. Why are you even doing this to me? Am I being interviewed?
Around the first of the year a determination was made that we should get a hamster. I confess I am not really sure exactly how all of that went down. When the determination was so made, though, that raised the question of where to find a hamster to bring home. I suggested that a pet store was probably not a good option - small cages, etc. - and that there were probably better places, like ethical breeders or something.
Turned out, there are indeed such places. They’re called ethical hamsteries. The nearest to us, about 50 minutes away, is Nantucket Hamstery in Huntley. We got on the waiting list. And we waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Seems that to get your hamster from an ethical hamstery - meaning among other things a place where the hamsters are not over-bred - you may have to wait six months.
During those six months, and especially toward the beginning, intense study occurred. Most of this study seems to have taken the form of watching every video posted by Victoria Raechel, a YouTuber whose channel boasts 593,000 subscribers. Victoria Raechel is a red-headed Canadian who seems to get especially animated by ripping on the poor products available at big pet stores. Or, maybe, those are the ones I’ve been most encouraged to watch. Perhaps there was some concern that I was going to go hang out at Petco?
Now, if you would have told me at any point in my life, all the way up to immediately before I wrote the preceding paragraph, that someone could get 593,000 subscribers to a YouTube channel by being a Canadian DIY hamster expert, I, uh, well, I would have done absolutely nothing useful with that information. And, indeed, am still doing absolutely nothing useful with that information.
Actually, the intense study almost certainly predated the decision to bring home a hamster, because the study involved selecting which type of hamster. All of this is a blur for me.
Once the decision was made and once we were on the waiting list, then it was time to figure out where a hamster would live. At one point this necessitated a date w/ IKEA, from where I brought back bins and what was intended to be a stand upon which to place a hamster home. Ah, but the home designs changed immensely as further study was undertaken.
This is Stewie’s home:
This is the inside, with Stewie… sniffing the turtle gnome head, I suppose:
When I was young, I had a cat. And when I was older I had two beagles. And there was much consternation about these wacky creatures. But ultimately, you want a cat to eat, you give it cat food, and you want a dog to eat, you give it dog food.
You want a hamster to eat?
You can try broccoli:
You can try whatever this crunchy thing is:
You can try a chunk of, um, cucumber? On a purple wheel?
You can go with a sampler platter:
Or, you can order flax spray off of Etsy from some random European country.
You know what makes for a really fascinating scenario? When you have to wait six months for a hamster, watching all sorts of hamster videos, hatching all sorts of ideas about things to do for when a hamster actually comes home, and you happen to be a registered dietitian. Apparently - purportedly - hamsters are not always the best at getting all of the nutrients they need, and, well, you can imagine how that might set off particular kinds of alarm bells!
Stewie is a little more timid than we would like. Syrian hamsters can be more or less personable, and Stewie has been just a bit more prone to hide than we’d hoped. I think he’s slowly coming around though.
Hamsters are generally nocturnal, and, at least in this household, wives are not, so that has been an interesting situation as well. Some nights there will suddenly be tremendous chaos at around 7:30pm as Stewie’s bedding gets replenished and he has to hang out in his alternate space with his purple wheel. Other nights though, he doesn’t seem to pop up until after everyone’s gone to bed.
I had only ever really experienced a hamster as being a rodent in a box about the size of my printer. But times have changed. People have apparently learned a lot more about them, and the level of interest in treating hamsters as serious pets is, I guess, about 593,000 strong. Stewie’s home isn’t tucked away in some bedroom, it’s right there in the living room. He’s very front and center, even when he’s spending all daylight hours burrowed away.
Issues of nourishment, evasiveness, and “poop flinging” aside, Stewie’s presence has had what I might call a grounding effect on us. Having a pet definitely helps provide an additional facet of connection for the bigger mammals in the house, and I do think there’s something to learning about responsibility and taking care of things, concepts which are pretty good for an 8 year old to be picking up. It so happens that his time here has also coincided with some significant landscaping work which has greatly enhanced our sentiment about the house, and has also coincided with the arrival of numerous house plants which have sort of further unified the strong sense of being home.
Next week we will have another Rousing Q&A, with priority given to any questions you all might have about Stewie, flax spray, or what’s wrong with my child’s eyeballs. Feel free to pose questions in the Substack comments, or find me on those terrible, terrible social media outlets.
Thoughts on Habitrail®?
If you put your hand into Stewie's cage, does he bite your finger?
Have you ever put Stewie into one of those hamster balls, and let him run around the floor?
Have you ever fed Stewie sunflower seeds? Looks like he might be eating a sunflower seed in the "Stewie nibbling" video. I hear those are addicting for small animals (and baseball players). My gerbil refused to eat anything else other than sunflower seeds.
What does Stewie drink? I didn't see one of those upside-down water bottles in his cage. Oh wait. I think I see a glass dish in his cage with water.
Does Stewie have one particular spot he uses for his bathroom?
What was the curious order from Lithuania? I was hoping you'd order something from Transnistria.
An excellent read. Very enjoyable.