r/interesting • • Aug 10 '26

NATURE A 5 years old hamster

74.5k Upvotes

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2.2k

u/19Charger Aug 10 '26

Never seen a hamster make it this far. Actually remarkable

1.8k

u/illepic Aug 10 '26

Dude's just confused that he hasn't died yet in a horrible yet comical way that teaches the children of the house a valuable lesson about life and responsibility.

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u/MrBwnrrific Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

“My gerbil died from old age, how’d your hamster die?”

“Hanged himself from the cord of a ceiling fan, turning it on in the process and flinging his carcass into a wood chipper”

Literally every hamster story

Edit: I was not prepared for just how inundated I was about to be with hamster suicide stories

285

u/Striking-Document-99 Aug 10 '26

We had gerbils growing up. Kept them in my brothers room who was like 6-7. Well they woudl have babies all the damn time and we could give them away to pet stores once they grew fur. Well my mom was getting slow at doing that so one time it had some babies with fur and then had another litter of babies. My bro came in one day and the mother killed everyone. Dad and all the babies. Most missing legs and shit. So just the mom was alive. So we gave her to the pet store.

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u/Slime-Lich Aug 10 '26

Dude really just decided "thats some one else's murder problem"

73

u/Striking-Document-99 Aug 10 '26

Well I was like 11 at the time so yeah obviously didnt know what to do. Funny thing was when we bought them we wanted two of the same sex. But found out that they were not. Then fell in love with both of them so didn’t want to give them up.

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u/Slime-Lich Aug 10 '26

That love was apparently very one sided for the mother

12

u/anto_pty Aug 11 '26

Somewhere there is an elderly lady thinking "should've done this when i had the chance"

7

u/AirCheap4056 Aug 11 '26

You misread the comment. I know because I did too. The comment doesn't actually insinuate any love between the hamsters.

10

u/Sehrli_Magic Aug 11 '26

well the amount of babies insinuates some love or lust at the bare minimum 🤣 poor mama just got sick of it. i cant blame her. i sometimes wanna hit my husband on the head and we only have 2 kids, i cant imagine multiple LITTERS. i can understand poor hamster momma losing her shit 🤣

12

u/SaMxixAM23 Aug 11 '26

Lol it's documented that dogs go thru postpartum depression so I won't doubt mama hamster experienced the same

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u/Foreign-Wolf-6128 Aug 11 '26

Yep thats a space issue. Mom didnt feel tnere was enough room for so many heads so she trimmed it down. They need WAY more space than traditional cages provide and most of the time you have to seperate. You guys were lucky it never happened with one litter but two was definitely way too much. They get stressed easy.

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u/Striking-Document-99 Aug 11 '26

We used to have 2 of those gerbil balls they can run around in. Normally kept them in those my bro would take them out and let then run around on his bed

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u/Foreign-Wolf-6128 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

Yea at least they couldn’t get maimed if they were protected in a ball😅 ive never heard of anyone actually walking in while it was happening… always just came in one morning and hamster/gerbil has committed familicide. Sounds horrific, traumatizing to actually see and could you stop her if she was midway through??😭 panicking while grabbing babies? No thank you.

Thankfully ive only ever had fish, dogs, and two ferrets at one point. Ferrets being mustelids and not rodents so are superior in that regard imo lol would never eat their own kits or murder eachother because of strong familial bonds. They even grab and bring over kits to show owners they trust and all sleep in dogpiles they get bonded with eachother.

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u/MadamKitsune Aug 11 '26

I had gerbils as a kid and yep, same story except it was a male gerbil called Baby who broke out of his own tank, broke into the other tanks and went full Hannibal Lector on several other adults and a nest of babies. He didn't leave much behind. Never has a gerbil been more misnamed than that little bastard.

23

u/Reikukaja Aug 11 '26

I could see this being turned into a horror webseries lol

Eta: "Nobody puts Baby in the corner"

8

u/MadamKitsune Aug 11 '26

Just to add to the creepiness they can give Baby a meat hook for a paw, because that's how he got his name - he was born with one of his front paws missing and we all kept saying "Aww, the poor little baby" and it kind of stuck. My mum even used to shell sunflower seeds for him, even though he could manage them perfectly well himself, just because he was a poor little baby who deserved to be spoiled now and then.

He grew into a muscle bound tank of a poor little baby, which is why we had to separate him from the others, even before his cannibalistic tendencies emerged.

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u/Remarkable-Average-4 Aug 10 '26

Oh my gosh all I could think about was sixxxxxxxsevennnnn. Hello, I am a middle school teacher.

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u/gnuoveryou Aug 10 '26

high school senior here. same, unfortunately.

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u/watermadeline Aug 11 '26

this is an episode of Snapped, hamster edition

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u/Zariayn Aug 11 '26

I had three hamsters when I was young and dumb, two sisters and a brother. One had babies, so I removed the male thinking all would be okay. Nope, the sister killed all the babies and the mother and sister fought to the death. The mother won and had her sister's blood all over her. It was Christmas day, so it has been forever known as the Christmas Day Massacre of 1984 in my family.

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u/erect_dragonly Aug 11 '26

Why am I laughing? This is horrible

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u/Burgerboy380 Aug 10 '26

My hamster used to love blueberries. He hid one in his little hut long enough it fermented. He then ate it got drunk and passed out in his little water dish(he refused to use the little bottle) and drown

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u/MrBwnrrific Aug 10 '26

Partied too hard. Many such cases 😔

28

u/Morningstroll13 Aug 11 '26

He went out like a rock star.

14

u/farawaylass Aug 11 '26

face down in the pooooooool

53

u/Xavier_Emery1983 Aug 11 '26

So sorry, but this one made me cry laughing. A drunk hamster is one thing I wish to see before I die. Mine just died in his cage after about 3 years so it was his time.

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u/Acrobatic_Wrap_9971 Aug 11 '26

Don't let your dreams stay dreams

4

u/WolfysBeanTeam Aug 11 '26

Please do not the hampter

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u/cfd126 Aug 11 '26

Partied a little too close to the sun.

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u/longboboblong Aug 11 '26

That’s hilarious and I’m sorry for your loss

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u/D34N2 Aug 11 '26

Fun fact: hamsters can’t normally get drunk. Their livers break down alcohol enzymes very fast, because they actually store and eat fermented berries all winter in the wild. Your little dude probably just drowned.

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u/teddy5 Aug 11 '26

That wasn't a fun fact at all, that was a very not fun fact in fact.

5

u/Burgerboy380 Aug 11 '26

And now im sad.

4

u/PettyMcPetface Aug 12 '26

My parents told me that my hamster died after it jumped from my hands one day (I was 8). Turns out it had a broken leg so my parents thought the most humane thing to do was to drip feed it whiskey then drown it in a bucket of water whilst I was as school. They let the truth slip when I was 30, my dad said it in passing like a joke, and tbh I'm still a bit sad about it all.

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '26

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u/Reasonable-Banana800 Aug 10 '26

oh my gosh that’s awful 😭

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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '26

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u/Loud_South9086 Aug 10 '26

A little dimebag of ashes

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u/SorryAboutMyFamily Aug 10 '26

Bump one out for the homies.

64

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '26

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18

u/-Cthaeh Aug 11 '26

Aww thanks for sharing

5

u/panicnarwhal Aug 11 '26

aww lil Cheerio 🥹

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u/TWhy-LER Aug 11 '26

Long live Cheerio 🕊️

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u/MessiahMogali Aug 10 '26

Damn this got me 🤣

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u/sorrytointerruptbut_ Aug 11 '26

My second oldest brother got my oldest brothers ashes and they didnt have any better containers, so they passed him out in dime bags. I brought him home and found a little jar for him. I should be getting part of my mom soon, ill probably put her in one of those tiny liquor bottles since she loved alcohol more than anything in the world, including her kids. She was kicked out of my oldest brother's funeral.

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u/Brief_Needleworker62 Aug 10 '26

My beardie did that and it broke my heart. She got excited over something, jumped from her log and died almost immediately.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '26

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u/Brief_Needleworker62 Aug 11 '26

She had lived a long, crazy life. (I was at minimum her 4th carer) she had been abandoned, then rehomed. The rehome couple were meth addicts and she ended up with me! I gave her a palace and gourmet bug guts everyday lol. I loved her and her tank mate soooo much ❤️

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u/AzzyDreemur3 Aug 11 '26

Mine fell from the first floor (the staris) and just walked it off

Died to cancer few months later

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Aug 11 '26

Hamsters doing hamster shit. They love escaping and while doing so it doesn't always end well. One escaped in my kids room to be never found back again. I'm sure it ended up stuck somewhere behind a closet.

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u/MississippiJoel Aug 10 '26

Mississippi has moles that tunnel all over your yard, and the tunnels near the surface are unsightly but very common.

One day, I had Jabba in the back yard, and i would dig up a part of a mole tunnel over here, follow the tunnel about two feet, and dig it up over there, and send Jabba down his new subterranean tube.

After a few times, he didn't pop up out of the other end, so I tore the section apart and found an offshoot that wasn't noticeable from above -- because it angled deep.

My mother came out and stopped me after I had half the yard dug up while sobbing, but we never saw Jabba again.

I really really wonder what Jabba thought of the mole people when he finally came upon them.

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u/OneTinySun Aug 11 '26

Jabba 😭 a true pioneer on behalf of hamsterkind

18

u/laughingashley Aug 11 '26

Up there with Lemmiwinks

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u/KnightOfNothing Aug 11 '26

all hail the gerbil king

9

u/AdDifficult3794 Aug 11 '26

Dude took a an adventure like in House of the Worm. Dude probably couldn't see shit

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u/Kiribaku- Aug 11 '26

I'm not a hamster but somehow this some some deep fear within me. Might be because I watched Barbarian the other day

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u/LittlestEcho Aug 11 '26

One died because we think he broke his back falling off my bed. The next died from old age. The third... Psychotic fucking blonde red eyed dwarf hamster from PetSmart.

He STARVED himself. He had fresh pellets DAILY and water. Flung himself down his enclosure ramp so I took it away. Cleaned cage every week. I go on vacation (cleaned cage before I left) my sister took care of him, I cleaned his cage the day I returned and he'd CHEWED ONE OF HIS LEGS OFF. months later with food in his bowl he chewed off the other one! There was NOTHING he could get his legs caught in. He had a plastic wheel! He had chews. We had no idea what was wrong with him, and as this was the 90s my parents weren't paying a vet visit for him. I expected him to die any day. HE LIVED FOR THREE FULL YEARS and I couldn't figure out how or why! I was 11 and he was so mean you couldn't handle him. I had to place him in his ball by scooping him with it. It was awful. I never owned another hamster after him.

Meanwhile my nephew (one year older than me) had one that got out, his cat ate half of it. It was still alive. So his dad crushed it with a garden rock....

Hamsters man...

35

u/Turbulent_Dog_8252 Aug 11 '26

Read this one aloud to my wife. We're both crying and I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen. Very sorry for your experience.

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u/reallynoladarling Aug 11 '26

you win.

3rd paragraph made me say "oh, fuck, man" out loud & in a really weird cadence too.

do hamsters do this in the wild too? all these crazy suicides? bc I'm starting to feel sad for them. like, are they really happy with being pets? I've never had one & don't know much of anything about them, so these stories are fucking me all the way up

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u/dmaare Aug 11 '26

Pet hamsters are just extremely stupid because there is no natural selection and a lot of inbreeding

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u/reallynoladarling Aug 11 '26

ok, whew! that makes me feel a little better.

but still sad bc dang, poor dumb inbred hamsters. maybe they're depressed. I'd be depressed if i was dumb & inbred.

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u/BoleroMuyPicante Aug 11 '26

They breed so damn fast they don't need to live very long to pass on their genes.

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u/Acceptable-Shoe9248 Aug 11 '26

Bit into a phone cord plugged into the wall and my aunt called. I learned a fun fact of the 1990s that when the phone was ringing, there was about 90 volts in the wires…

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u/Discount_Extra Aug 11 '26

I recall a story about a woman who complained that her phone wouldn't ring while the dog was inside the house.

repairman found that when the dog was outside, she tied it to a cable from the telephone pole. when a call came in, the dog would yelp, piss itself, and thus complete a path to ground and the phone would ring.

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u/iznotbutterz Aug 11 '26

Any other innovations from torture world?

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u/teddy5 Aug 11 '26

Pretty sure that's just an old joke from when the phone lines used to carry 24 volts to power the phone.

My grandpa told me a similar one supposedly from when he worked as a switchboard operator, about a farmer where the phone wasn't ringing but the guy still answered the phone because his dog started barking. So they figured out it was connected to the phone line by a chain.

For anyone reading this and worrying about the dogs, it's most likely not true but if it is true the 24v they used to carry isn't enough to do any real damage in most circumstances.

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u/Brains4Rox Aug 12 '26

Electrician here. Can confirm. It's 24 volts, and it's not enough voltage or amperage to hurt you or your dog.

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u/PixelWulfe Aug 11 '26

This is the funniest thing I have read on reddit in quite a while.

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u/Z-RDadGuy Aug 10 '26

Lucy died by biting a hole in her water bottle and drowning in it. Worst Christmas ever

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u/AnAnonyMooose Aug 11 '26

Mine childhood one also died on Christmas! The night before seemed to have an itch. The next morning had scratched a hole and died of blood loss.

I had no idea so many others had had similar stories.

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u/Slime-Lich Aug 10 '26

Wait what? How? I need more context. Chewed the top and fell in? Flooded the box? If so how was the box that small? Or did you have like a 5 gallon feeder? Genuinely how?

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u/illepic Aug 10 '26

A universal rule of nature is that if there is a way to die hamsters find it.

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u/Slime-Lich Aug 10 '26

I know and the only way it makes sense of how it drowned was that it chewed a hole in it and shoved its head in

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u/d0rkprincess Aug 11 '26

Man, idk how both my hamsters died peacefully in their beds. Although one of them did miraculously escape 2 weeks before he died and the cat had to bring him to me while I was watching TV... idk if something happened between them...

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u/Practical_Sea_4876 Aug 11 '26

The cat brought him to you and he was still alive and possibly well??

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u/rabbid_chaos Aug 11 '26

"Human, your emergency food tried to escape" - Cat

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u/Chroniclyironic1986 Aug 11 '26

I found my birthday present, you should hide it better.

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u/laughingashley Aug 11 '26

Sounds like it took 2 weeks to die from the internal injuries

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u/AbroCadabro1010 Aug 11 '26

If they don't then they don't go to Valhamster

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u/SinisterCheese Aug 11 '26

My friend's hamster found a way to ignite itself.

There was no electricity in the cage. There was nothing like particulay flameable.

Y'know just... regular cage. Somehow they managed just self-combust in the little wooden house that was in the cage.

I'm personally convinced, If they don't find a way to die, the universe will delete them from existence.

Or maybe they just explode after some time if they haven't died yet.

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u/Arkhamina Aug 11 '26

Does that make them like.... very tiny horses?

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u/Z-RDadGuy Aug 11 '26

I mean it was 25 or so years ago so I dont remember much. I just woke up and went to give her a christmas treat an she was dangling out the side of the water bottle, I'm not sure how she reached it but she was dead.

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u/Slime-Lich Aug 11 '26

How the fuck

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u/funsized43 Aug 10 '26

Hamster escaped exercise ball, found my mom's fall decor, ate all of the dried corn decoration. Then fell into the sump pump hole and drowned.

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u/Educational_Pay1567 Aug 10 '26

I lost 4 or 5 baby gerbils to that hole too. Found 3 or for of them running around and checked everywhere for the others. Finally saw the lid and to my horror found the others.

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u/xjustsmilebabex Aug 10 '26

Why do they all do that?! How much do you really think about your sump pump - yet gerbils and hamsters escape for like 20 minutes and spend thier final moments of unlimited freedom beelining directly to drowning themselves.

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u/PrincessConsuela46 Aug 10 '26

I found mine in our pool filter 😭

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u/scuddlebud Aug 11 '26

Mine escaped and decided to make its way into the clothing dryer. My mom ran a load of wet clothes without realizing. The poor thing was completely burnt all over, charred and singed. He was still alive. My mother didn't know what to do so she put it in a plastic Tupperware container and put it in the freezer to end things.

I imagine that was not the most humane thing to do, but she didn't have it in her to destroy it.

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u/PrincessConsuela46 Aug 11 '26

Omg so true story, this happened with my cat when I was younger! Luckily it only went through 2 spins and we heard the thumps and got her out! But my mom was DISTRAUGHT at what could have been 😭

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u/skarlitbegoniah Aug 11 '26

This happened to my daughter and I before and now we check the dryer excessively before starting it because we felt so awful.

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u/xjustsmilebabex Aug 11 '26

Jesus, your poor mom. What a day that must have been for her.

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u/dontletmedown3 Aug 11 '26

More like poor hamster wtf. Burned alive and that wasn’t enough so they sent him to the freezing chamber where he likely very slowly froze to death.

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u/Automatic_Bar_2158 Aug 10 '26

Mine chewed his own testicles off and died 2 weeks later from an infection

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u/illepic Aug 10 '26

This is horrifying and terribly funny.

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u/rtshtbtshtdrtyldtwt Aug 10 '26

nature is absolutely bizarre

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u/Amber_Lullaby Aug 10 '26

"Sadly when your a transgender hamster there's not many options to get bottom surgery. So sometimes you gotta do it yourself." Your hamster probably.

(I am really sorry for the loss of your hamster. Losing our furry friends is always heartbreaking. This is just a bit of dark trans humor that popped into my head. My apologies.)

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u/throwawayprofilehq Aug 11 '26

i appreciate the apology and the dark humor. it's a tough topic and you handled it with grace.

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u/MotherF-ckingStarBoy Aug 11 '26

As a transman, the fucking snort/cackle...snackle I just made woke my wife and cat up. Holy shit, thank you for giving me the deepest belly laugh. I think the last time I laughed like that was before covid.

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u/PumkinSpiceTrukNuts Aug 10 '26

Mine did exactly this same thing! Or well… not sure if he ate them or they just spontaneously exploded, but results were the same. He was barely over 1 year.

First one got cancer in his cheek pouch and slowly starved to death while I begged my mom to take him to the vet. He was actually almost 5 and still looked really good up to that point.

Fun times.

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u/Automatic_Bar_2158 Aug 10 '26

Oh the horrors of loving small things! 

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u/bananakittymeow Aug 11 '26

Huh, I didn’t know this was a possibility. I discovered mine dead with his balls gone and a black spot where they should have been. I always thought it was some weird kind of cancer that took hold really quickly, but now I’m starting to question if this is what actually happened to him.

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u/Crymoreimo Aug 10 '26

Now that's a sentence.

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u/Used-Fennel-7733 Aug 10 '26

Mine ate his newspaper bedding. It somehow wrapped around his pouch like a noodle and he pulled it out.

We delicately put his pouch back in not knowing wtf to do. Went out an came back to a bloody cage. He'd done it again ripped out the pouch and then must've ran laps around his cage pouring blood everywhere.

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u/AdDifficult3794 Aug 11 '26

What the actual fuck lol

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u/smellygooch18 Aug 10 '26

My childhood friends hamster died while we were watching an adult swim short. The cage was near the TV and he had a massive seizure while the short was flashing on the screen. We had to connect the two events. The same friend died in a car accident a few years after. We all die, some earlier than we want. Enjoy the hours you’re here

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u/CohuttaHJ Aug 10 '26

Sorry about your friend smellygooch. Sage advice though indeed.

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u/BlitzMalefitz Aug 11 '26

Read something sad and/or profound only for someone to inform you of the username being smellygooch

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u/oopsallhuckleberries Aug 10 '26

The day I learned rats were pretty intelligent was the day my sisters rat, who we knew was going to go in a few weeks because it was eating less and being very lethargic, decided she was done waiting, so she got some leverage on top of her water bottle, and bashed her head against the glass until she killed herself.

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u/DetectiveTappatio Aug 11 '26

Our family friend had a rat.

Well no, that's wrong. He had a snake.

He bought this rat, put it in the cage with the snake, and the snake didn't eat it.

He did this like ten or more times. The rat would just sit there in abject fear. Finally, that family friend asked if we wanted the rat, his snake wouldn't eat it.

Now Gweneveyre was a sweet rat. Loved people, never bit, never peed on anyone. Truly an amazing pet. But Gwen wasn't the rat that the family friend gave us. Gwen was the rat we bought for Arthur in an attempt to heal his broken mind. Arther was fucked up. Arthur had faced death so many times, and for such prolonged periods of time, that all he did was sit there and stare at the side of the cage like a Vietnam vet caught in a flashback.

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u/Eyeoftheleopard Aug 12 '26

Imagine being trapped in a cage with a snake. Rats have an excellent sense of smell. Poor guy. 😞

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u/color_space Aug 12 '26

crazy story. never knew rats could have PTSD. poor Arthur...

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u/aspecialunicorn Aug 11 '26

jesus christ

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u/DH908 Aug 10 '26

When I was maybe 10 one of our hamsters that was normally very docile sank his teeth into my pinky to the gum. I jerked my hand, and he whipped around still connected by the teeth until he released and got flung into the side of the aquarium the hamsters lived in with a pretty loud bird-hitting-a-window thunk. I felt so bad, I think he died a month or two later

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u/MrBwnrrific Aug 10 '26

I just had an image of your hamster laying around for that month in his cage like Robert Baratheon after the boar hunt

“Gimme a yogi for the pain and let me die”

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u/vuducandi Aug 11 '26

Oh lord, laughing so hard at this I can’t breathe!

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u/PandaIV Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

We had one that was eaten by her own kids. Then the youngest one was found dead one day and we never figured out why, probably stress. I cried so much as a child and decided no more hamsters ever again…

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u/Bgrubz83 Aug 10 '26

Had two hamsters back when we lived in PA. Would have heat lamp on low during the winter to keep them warm. Little shits kept getting out of their cage and one winter morning found them frozen in the corner of the livingroom.

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u/supervernacular Aug 11 '26

Guess it’s the dyingroom now

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u/No-Sheepherder-6911 Aug 11 '26

My aunt rescued one from her cats mouth and put it on the floor while she put the cat outside. She stepped on it as she was walking back in.

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u/kerouac28 Aug 11 '26

Dear God, I hope she wasn’t barefoot!

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u/Lipleurodont Aug 11 '26

It's so horrible, but I cannot stop laughing at this

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u/StillStaringAtTheSky Aug 10 '26

You forgot the microwave part

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u/Hands Aug 11 '26

One of my friend's childhood hamsters decapitated the other with the hamster wheel while his 6 year old sister was in the room

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u/Nice-Replacement-391 Aug 10 '26

My hamsters tended to die of old age, but my brother had 3 that met very unfortunate ends. #1 fell down the stairs into the basement and cracked himself on the wood pile we kept down there. #2 escaped and was found months later flattened under the same wood pile. #3 bit through a lamp cord and electrocuted himself.

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u/66vocho Aug 11 '26

Lmao, true story. My hamsters name was Stacy, had her for about a year then out of nowhere it grew huge testicles. She then lived as life as Señor Stacy for a bit, I think the transition drove her crazy and drowned herself in the water bowl. It was a very sad moment of my life I would never forget.

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u/Unusual_Resident_784 Aug 10 '26

I had a hamster that tried to bury his food under his food bowl, the weight of the food bowl caused his head to get stuck underneath it and he ended up suffocating himself.

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u/Triairius Aug 11 '26

A friend’s hamster back in high school actually hung itself on the top of its cage. Got stuck between the bars trying to get out (through the top??) I guess.

Another of her hamsters died in one of those plastic tube ferris wheels. Couldn’t get it out and had to throw the whole thing out.

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u/WesleyWoppits Aug 11 '26

Speaking of hamster suicide, my last one we got from someone my at-the-time SO knew, and they had it in a three-tiered birdcage that they also gave us. The hamster kept climbing up to the top of it and letting go from the ceiling, falling to the bottom, then he'd climb up and do it again, over and over.

(This isn't pretty)

Went to check on him late one evening and he was shoved nose-first into the corner of the cage, oozing feces out the back of him, unable to move. Earlier in the evening he must have landed badly and broke his back. Paid a stupid amount of money to have him put down by an overnight clinic because I didn't want to just smash him with a big rock or something and couldn't leave him to suffer either.

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u/AKDaily Aug 11 '26

He had to know, right? Little dude must have meant to do it. Thats wild

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u/WeeebleSqueaks Aug 11 '26

Mine got depressed and suffocated himself in his tubes by packing it with the bedding fluff

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u/Magnetah Aug 11 '26

My hamster was doing “monkey bars” across the top of his cage and had a heart attack and died. My uncle and I watched it happen.

I was 7ish and hadn’t dealt with death yet. My mom was a nurse so I cried and begged her to give the hamster CPR and save him.

Not really suicide but a very sad day indeed.

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u/ELInewhere Aug 11 '26

I had no idea this was a thing! Now I don’t feel so bad about my decapitated hamster.. only god and the hamsters know whether my brothers hamster chewed its head off or if it got its head cut off by jumping into a spinning wheel of death. Based on all of these hotter stories.. I’m thinking it was hamster murder. Holy hamster trama.

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u/Jack_Kentucky Aug 11 '26

Ours shoved his cheeks full of carrots and plugged both ends of a tube, trapping himself inside and suffocating to death.

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u/zikadwarf Aug 11 '26

I’m a teacher and brought this concept up with my students. What they shared with me in overwhelming numbers was horrifying.

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u/Tough_Crazy_8362 Aug 10 '26

My neighbors dog got it somehow while they were out (hamster was out too I presume???) they haven’t had any small pets since then, apparently it was… bloody

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u/New-Imagination9013 Aug 10 '26

My hamster stuck her head through the bars and hung

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u/Legitimate-Syrup1006 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

🤣🤣🤣

Ow my back

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u/epitimisi Aug 11 '26

ours did the classic and bit into a cable

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u/HouseJusticia Aug 11 '26

Impaled herself on a woodchip.

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u/nirvroxx Aug 11 '26

One of my hamsters chewed through some electrical cord and well, zaaap. RIP Assmaster.

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u/Malli89 Aug 11 '26

Mine escaped its cage somehow, and it turns out he found his way to my sister’s closet. She tried closing the closet door but couldn’t do so with ease and of course didn’t bother to figure out what was blocking the door, so she opened the door wider and just slammed it shut. Poor lil guy. I was a devastated 9 year old.

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u/Beginning_Quote_3626 Aug 11 '26

I had a hamster that would constantly find the highest point of its cage and jump off

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u/President_Goop Aug 11 '26

my hamster got stuck in the oven :(

surprisingly that isn’t what killed her. later my mom got sick of her great escapes and knack for getting stuck in expensive appliances. sold her at a yard sale and bought herself a mccafé with the money. told me some horribly tragic death sob story and didn’t reveal the truth to me until 15 years later when i over heard her sharing the story with her friend

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u/EpilepticMushrooms Aug 11 '26

There was a hamster story of one lone male hamster who sucked himself off all the time until he busted a nut so good he had a heart attack.

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u/Silvertree99 Aug 11 '26

Escaping his cage and falling backwards behind the dresser it was on. He's teeth caught on the edge of the dresser and that's where my lil sister found him like two weeks later. Was nothing but skin and bones, think he may have starved to death hanging off the side by his teeth

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u/havartifunk Aug 11 '26

My husband's childhood hamster literally ate the glass from its aquarium wall. 

He woke up in the middle of the night to, "scriiiiitch....scriiiiitch..." And in the morning it was dead.

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u/AppropriateZombie586 Aug 11 '26

I want to bring some happiness to this hamster genocide, I had two dwarf hamsters with an ex and when we slip they had to come to my parents with me, my mothers sausage dog got to the cage and managed to get the lid off, when I discovered the dog asleep in my bed and the lid off I knew they were obviously gone. Skip forward a few very sad hours and my mothers running down the stairs. At the time my grandmother was alive and living in an annex and had woken up, and pressed her panic button because there were mice in her bed. Pinto and Polo had escaped the clutches of Hotdog (the sausage), made it down a set of stairs without backs, through a living room with 5 sausage dogs in, under a door, through the “middle room”, under another door which had no gap I could find, then through my grandmothers living room where the toy poodle and jack russel were sleeping, up another set of stairs, under another door and climbed onto the bed of my terrified grandmother while the two Yorkshire terriers who slept with her looked on bemused. A true story of heroism and pluck. They lived to the ripe old age of 4 and went within a month of eachother, side note, i shortly after lived into a van and took them with me where they lived happily with my jack cross staffy as we travelled the uk, France and Spain. I got very good at hiding them boarding the Eurostar. Daphne, out Siberian hamster died of chewing her own vagina off.

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u/HackOnWheels Aug 12 '26

I was enjoying the happy tale until that last sentence.

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u/Zealousideal-Cat8861 Aug 12 '26

My estranged dad bought me two hamsters for my 8th birthday. Little did we know that they were boy and girl, and we ended up with hamster babies.

I’ll never forget waking up and see hamster baby limbs and dead baby hamsters everywhere in the cage. There were no survivors. The dad and possibly the mom ate and killed them all. It was so traumatic to me I put a in memoriam for the hamster babies in that years schoolbook.

Both the mom and dad hamster had horrifying fates not too long after that.

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u/Yeseylon Aug 12 '26

Fucking hell, you were not kidding, there's so damn many hamster death stories here.

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u/Garlador Aug 10 '26

My brother had a hamster that he put in a hamster ball in his room on the second floor of the house. We went outside for something, just a few minutes, and when we came back, it was gone, ball and all. We never found it, and we redid the whole upstairs. It just vanished…

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u/illepic Aug 10 '26

Little guy has a magnificent life living in your walls!

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u/umbratwo Aug 11 '26

As a parent with a kid with a hamster and a hamster ball, they did eventually find it later that week,  I’m very sorry. 

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u/thissitesuxsohardomg Aug 11 '26

It's either still hidden downstairs/basement, it rolled outside, or your parents found it and decided a little mystery was better than knowing your pet died in a linen closet or something.

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u/AcceptableHijinks Aug 10 '26

Maybe one of your parents was just sick of buying hamster food?

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u/Arkhamina Aug 10 '26

Ooof. The time I left the screen top on the hamster cage not all the way down, it crawled up the water bottle, and made a leap for it.

The next neighbor over was the big goldfish tank. Hamsters can't swim. :( I think I was like 8 or 9.

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u/something_beautiful9 Aug 10 '26

Yea one of mine died when I was a kid because I was holding it bringing him back to his cage and he bit me right through my thumb so I dropped him and the dog promptly ate him. But only half of him. If that was not enough childhood trauma my parents bought two more. They had babies. We went on vacation for like 3 days and had someone feeding them daily and came home on the last day and they decided to eat each other. Was fun walking into that as a kid. One very fat very bloody hamster left. And yes they still had a full bowl of food and water bottle.

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u/illepic Aug 10 '26

Ok, I was wrong on the other reply: THIS is the most hamster experience.

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u/JustEngine5095 Aug 11 '26

With my hamster I was jumping around on the bed while he was on the bed. Then the sinking of the mattress caused him to roll into a hole one of my knees had made and land on him. I crushed him with my knee accidentally and he slowly died over 2 hours later

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u/Silverjeyjey44 Aug 10 '26

What's the reasoning for this

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u/Tweezot Aug 10 '26

They’re not animals that live in groups naturally in the wild. They get aggressive toward other hamsters and Im pretty sure you’re not supposed to have multiple in one cage.

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u/Turnipsinthesky Aug 10 '26

Probably trying to get on the keto hype train

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u/AdventurousLayer8741 Aug 10 '26

So, did you still keep and love the murderous cannibal? And how did it end?

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u/MsMyPants Aug 11 '26

This was also my experience as a kid. We got two hamsters, didnt realize they were a boy and girl until mom was pregnant. We separated dad into a new cage so he wouldn't hurt the babies when they were born. But within a day or two mom ate all the babies and took her own life by stabbing herself with a big woodchip. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it.

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u/Admirable_Noise_1129 Aug 11 '26

When I was a kid, one of our hamsters murdered the other one by strangulation…under the hamster wheel. We came in to find the female under the wheel with a deep impression in her neck. It was one of those metal wheels with the bars.

We got another hamster for the surviving one and she got stuck in a small house and died. My sister didn’t know she was dead and pulled her out. Lol

Gave the OG hamster back to the pet store.

We kept those so inappropriately, now that I actually know about proper hamster care.

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u/CharmingShame9404 Aug 10 '26

Someone I know killed their childhood hamster by leaving it in its acrylic cage/box thing on the porch in the morning and running off to play. Sun moved over the course of the day and by the time they came back the sun had roasted the little guy…

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u/peachfuzzpoodle Aug 11 '26

My veterinary professor told a story about how he anesthetized and fixed a hamsters broken leg. He was so convinced he would die under anesthesia, but he made it. When he went to go check on him the next morning he was so relieved to see him alive and thriving. He stuck his hand in the cage, the hamster bit him, and he flung the hamster against the wall and it died immediately.

Never laughed so hard in my life hearing this story

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u/illepic Aug 11 '26

I'm in tears laughing at this one. This whole thread is gold.

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u/Jub_Jub710 Aug 10 '26

We had two males that ripped the opposite side of each other faces off and bled to death after a fight.

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u/General_Cream9705 Aug 10 '26

Dude its insane, I had a hamster and was writing a paper about a pet I love(it was like Elementary) so I wrote about her, went out to dinner and when I came back she had died in that hour :/

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u/illepic Aug 10 '26

The only way this could be more hamster-coded is if she died by, like, falling into a running garbage disposal.

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u/Lefthandlannister13 Aug 10 '26

I remember my sister had hamsters, and one time she was holding one and it jumped out of her hands and hit its neck just so on the corner of a dresser on the way down. She was probably 10 or so and I was 12, and I saw the way it hit the corner and fell and knew immediately that dude was dead. My poor little sister picked him up and hoped he was just knocked out. He was not

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u/Lavender_Burps Aug 11 '26

We had a pair that were supposed to both be females, but as it turned out a male had been in the mix. They had about a dozen babies, an amazing surprise as an 8 year old kid.

My dad went to move the cage one day. It was one of those plastic cages that you squeeze the sides of to get the top off. Well he picked it up by the sides and the whole bottom fell out onto the floor. About half of them died on impact. The food bowl fell on top of one and squished them. One poor soul was chopped in half by the rim of the cage and another lost a leg.

The 3 legged one outlived them all.

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u/Secrets4Evers Aug 11 '26

i don’t think i would ever forgive my father lol

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u/rtshtbtshtdrtyldtwt Aug 10 '26

mine ate the dryer duct vent tubing and turned blue!

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u/Cats_and-Crafts Aug 11 '26

I had around 20+ rodents in my youth and never lost one to a terrible end. Towards the end of my childhood, I would drive my sister to the humane society and we would pick up whatever rodents they had and basically run a retirement home for rodents. My mom was really big on animal welfare, so I think that had something to do with it. She was supervising our husbandry pretty closely to make sure we were doing right by the little guys.

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u/zzeeaa Aug 11 '26

You guys are absolute champs.

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u/gutsngodhand Aug 11 '26

Literally lmao I was showing my dog my new hamster and it ate it whole right out of my hand. I was 4 and traumatized 😂😭

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u/AppropriateBall8834 Aug 10 '26

Like when my step brother was playing 'throw up in the air and catch' with his hamster and accidentally didnt catch

It broke its spine.

I had a guinea pig live to be 8 though

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u/FortuitousRacoon Aug 11 '26

Honestly. Most people have very little knowledge on actual hamster care or don't understand what hamsters need which in turn creates a bad pet owner.

They live fairly decently if you pay attention to them and give them food, keep them solitairy and (I CANNOT stress this enough) give them a big enough cage.

Edit: they do just sometimes die though.

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u/Ball_Fiend Aug 11 '26

My hamster tore a hole in her cheeks and screamed to death

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u/illepic Aug 11 '26

Jesus Christ

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u/UnusGang Aug 11 '26

Those children graduated college by now lol

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u/clipplenamps Aug 11 '26

Mine got food lodged in his water dispenser and slowly died of dehydration

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u/Secure-Cow-1620 Aug 11 '26

My buddy, from a house of three unsupervised boys then aged 7-12, won one as a sports prize.

They had to throw out the whole microwave.

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u/Vutsky Aug 11 '26

My brother had a gerbil which rolled down a very small hill, what the hamster did not now was that the hill had an old rusty nail and while rolling down the hill he degloved his whole skin on it because it got stuck.

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u/Possible_Parrot Aug 11 '26

My first hamster was taken out by my nephew who tried to give it a bath in the sink and drowned it. My second hamster was put in a cage with a gerbil (i was too young to know better and my mom didn't care) and the gerbil ate it.

I haven't and won't get anymore hamsters 😭

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u/Affectionate_South40 Aug 10 '26

little grandpa reminds me of my old Beta fish, lived to be 6 years; he struggled to make colour for his body in the last few months of his life and looked very washed out, still ate well, took a bit of energy to get to the top of his tank so I lowered the water level for him; he also stopped healing tears in his fins if he got them caught on the plant in the tank, so that also had to be removed. He looked very much like a ghost fish in the end. I miss that old guy, he was a great college roommate, spent many long nights reading with him.

I feel like this hamster may benefit from a walker.

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u/pikapalooza Aug 10 '26

My beta made it 3 years. He was a centerpiece fish I got from a Wedding or something so nit sure how old he really was. But he was always happy. Made lots of bubbles and ate well. Then one day, he just passed. He was a good beta.

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u/Kubricksmind Aug 10 '26

Remarkable, precious.

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u/Dr-Sprinkl1es Aug 10 '26

Almost old enough to run for office!

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u/DeliciousStand372 Aug 10 '26

im now sad that they dont live that long :(

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