Pancake and Waffle (Part IV)

Where was I…  Oh, yes.

We got them (Pancake and Waffle) home uneventfully and placed them in their cage on the boy’s desk.  They ran around excitedly, sniffing at everything and exploring every square inch of the cage crawling up and down the tubes, acting shocked when they saw each other, dashing around some more, scaring each other again, and finally settling on the food dish as the most interesting thing in their new home.

After several dozen milliseconds passed, they grew bored with simply consuming the food, so they entertained themselves by pushing a chunk of hamster nibbles (or whatever it is they eat) around and around the food dish.  Wheee!

The treadmill on the second floor of the cage was re-inspected and, seeing that it was neither edible nor another hamster they hadn’t seen in, like, thirty-seven seconds, Pancake/Waffle (I don’t know.  Ask Schrodinger which is which, I guess.  You collapse the waveform...  I’m busy.) got on and ran.

He ran as far and as fast as his little legs could take him for about 10 seconds and decided he needed a break.  Dwarf hamsters weigh much, much less than a plastic circular treadmill and have no concept of “inertia” or “centripetal force”, so stepping gracefully off the side of the rapidly spinning wheel wasn’t in its top one hundred things to accomplish that moment.

A few rotations later, gravity took over and the little guy caromed off the axle and he ka-thunked onto the bottom of the wheel to the absolute joy of his audience.  Whether it was fun for him, too, or just your standard, run-of-the-mill brain damage he got on again and did the same thing.  And again. And again.

After a bit, the other guy competed his circumambulation of the Holy Food Dish and went to go see what the rumbly hubbub on the second deck was all about.  “Hey, that looks like fun!” he thought… maybe.  I’ll admit that it was equally likely that he thought [insert absolute silence here].  Anyway, he hopped on.

In case you haven’t run into this at your local gym, there is a reason they have a “one person on the treadmill at a time” policy.  Wait...  Are you telling me that don’t have a sign like that at your gym?!    Well, believe me the rules here are very, very, very clear.

They began to squabble and nip and bite and scratch at each other just like that old lady at my local gym.  Unlike Abuelita Grumpy-Pants, though, they eventually made peace with the fact that they could both technically fit on the exercise machine at the same time and didn’t go hobbling off to narc on me to the manager. 

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term, a “zero sum game” is one where there is a definite winner (+1) and a definite loser (-1).  Those scores add up to zero, hence the name.  I’m sure you have conversations with “co”-workers or “loved” ones that are like that.

All the time…

Please tell me I’m not alone…

Sooo… watching the complete lack of teamwork involved when two Robos try to spin a wheel together really showcased the fact that zero plus zero is also zero.  It would be helpful if they ran at the same speed… or at least started and stopped at the same time… or tried to run in the same direction.  I think maybe they achieved three-fifths of a revolution once. 

Did I mention the wheel came free with the cage?  You get what you pay for.

 

At first it was like the soft rumbling of a distant thunderstorm… but not really.  It reminded me of when the people next to us in our old neighborhood bought their 13-year-old a drum set.  Then it reminded me of when he turned 18 and started playing with his band… Still ok, but a bit timesome at times… Then it reminded me of when he turned 23.  His band had long since broken up but, since he was still living at home, he no longer had alcohol restrictions or a bedtime or a job…

After maybe a week of these guys violating the heck out of the treadmill’s warranty, the plastic-on-plastic bearings went bad.  It got louder and louder and louder.  Eventually, it got so bad that we had to unmount the wheel from the side of the cage so the boy could get to sleep.  Nocturnal animals (admittedly passable drummers) couldn’t care less about your stupid school (work) schedule. 

They would have to find some other way to entertain themselves.

In the morning, they were gone.

(To be continued...)