Open Question: can i submit this to a parenting mag. for publication?
The Tale of Mr. Poopers
It is a parent’s worst nightmare. We agree to take the beloved class pet for the weekend, at the behest of our pleading child, and then lose it, or worse, kill it, when it is in our care. My son Sam has just joined a Christian summer day camp. Mr. Poopers is the treasured hamster, who has been lovingly cared for by many–taken home by besotted camp-goers for weekend stays, loved by the staff. For two years, Mr. Poopers, with his v-shaped bottom and creamy tan patches of fur and white belly, has wriggled his whiskery way into the hearts of anyone associated with Morning Star Day Care in Leadville, Colorado.
So, when Sam asked if we could keep him for the weekend, I was torn. As a single, busy parent, I thought, okay, this is going to be a pain in the neck, because we have two cats, but Mr. Poopers has a cage, and his well-worn hamster wheel. We can keep the animals separate. Plus, this will help Sam to feel part of the camp, which he is joining mid-summer, after the kids all already know each other. Add to that, the fact that I am an elementary school teacher, and I have seen first-hand, even if it was only a hermit crab, or a bowl full of fish, just how much kids treasure the “school,” or in this case, “camp” pet. I gave a nod yes, and it was settled. Mr. Poopers would spend the following weekend with us.
With trepidation, I picked up Sam and Mr. Poopers on a Friday afternoon in mid-July, after Sam’s first full week at Morning Star Summer Camp. During the course of the first evening, we placed his cage in several different places in the house we had only just moved into at the beginning of the month. Mr. Poopers resided on the coffee table for a short time, on the kitchen table, on a chair in my bedroom, until his clanging and rustling became intolerable during the first night, and finally, on the desk in Sam’s room.
Sam thought Mr. Poopers should be “exercised” from time to time. He would remove Mr. Poopers from his cage, and let the hamster scurry around the carpeted bedroom under his watchful eye. We took the responsibility of caring for Mr. Poopers quite seriously. We changed his newspapers daily, adjusted the water bottle, cut up fresh strawberries and carrots, as well as gave him the occasional Ritz cracker, or odd piece of corn tortilla. Mr. Poopers thrived during his two day stay. He rode merrily around inside his transparent plastic wheel, ate with gusto all that we fed him, and left his namesakes all over the floor of the cage and on the surrounding desktop.
I woke up Monday morning with a sense of relief. We’d made it. Although Sam wouldn’t go back to Morning Star until Tuesday, I thought it best to deliver Mr. Poopers back to his proper caregivers as soon as possible, and I knew the staff and younger children would be there on a Monday. I hurried to shower and dress, then went into Sam’s bedroom to retrieve the cage. The cage door was open. How could that have happened? (I would never find out.) No Mr. Poopers. Just then, Daisy, our tabby, brushed guiltily by, on her way to the back porch. My heart pounded. Had Daisy eaten Mr. Poopers? Sam and I launched a full scale search, and lo and behold, way in the back of Sam’s toy closet, was Mr. Poopers. He was safe! Yippee! We put him back into the cage and closed the door. I hurried to my computer to check email before heading out the door with the pet.
A minute later, Sam rounded the corner. “Mom. You are going to be really, REALLY mad. I let Mr. Poopers out for a minute to explore around the kitchen and he disappeared into a hole in the floor under the heater.”
“What?” I screamed, leaping up and hurrying into the kitchen. I was so mad, I picked up a pair of tennis shoes and threw them into the clothes hamper. After we had only just found him, how could my son have let him out again, only to let him slip under the floor boards of our rented house? I could hardly rip up all the linoleum. We poked many items into the hole, and dropped crackers down, but the hampster failed to reappear. I thought about him starving to death down there. I just won’t let myself think about that, I murmured silently to myself.
I marched Sam over to the daycare center, where I had Sam recount the sad tale of Mr. Pooper’s demise. Miss Jane, the director, in her calm way, helped talk us through it. As a religious woman, she said she’d pray. We all looked sadly at the hamster ball Miss Jane had bought for Mr. Poopers over the weekend. Now he would never use it. The three of us worked out that Sam would wash windows for the camp the following Monday to earn money to pay for a Mr. Poopers II. We’d have to drive to Denver, an hour and a half away, to find a new hamster. No one carried pets in our small mountain community.
“Before you give up entirely, see if you can locate the crawl space under the kitchen,” said Miss Jane, a veteran hamster owner. “My sons lost several, and we always got them back the same way. Put out a d

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:36:43 GMT

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