We have had a hamster since April of this year. I have come to think of her as Nibbles, the Miracle Hamster. She has earned this title quite handily, and yesterday was no exception.
You see, Nibbles likes to run away. Houdini might have been a better name for our talented hamster. She has escaped three, separate times to date. When I was gone on vacation with Austin to California in May and my parents were taking care of her, she ran out of water, and, understandably, staged an escape. My parents have mouse poison in small, childproof containers throughout the house. The fear of impending pet poisoning gripped my mom. They ransacked the house for her, and, when they were unable to locate her, my mom left Nibbles‘ cage on the floor, with the door open. She left the baby monitor on the floor near the cage so that she might hear her if she returned in the evening. She text messaged me to pray for Nibbles’s safe return. It seems funny to pray for the return of a hamster, but my girls had already become quite attached to Nibbles. So pray we did. Within an hour, I received a second text message proclaiming Nibbles's miraculous return. My mom had heard some scratching sounds on the monitor. She went downstairs to find Nibbles back inside her open cage. With that much house and that many food options, her return was surely not coincidence or blind luck. Was it?
After the second time Nibbles vanished, we wired her cage door shut. We weren’t entirely sure someone hadn’t just left the cage door open the first time. The second time, we realized she could get the door open herself.
Enter yesterday... We were instructing a friend on how to care for our pets when we leave on vacation in awhile. We arrived at the girls’s bedroom to find Nibbles gone from her cage... again. We explained Nibbles’s care anyway, in hopes of her eventual return. We searched again, but to no avail. Their room bears a certain cluttered quality, even when clean, that I attribute to the fact that they have 10 grandparents and about 20 aunts and uncles - all of whom are generous at birthdays and Christmas. There was no way we were finding that hamster. I put her cage on the floor with a carrot and hoped she might again decide to return home. At that point, she could have been anywhere in the house.
I take three pills at night before bed. Two are an herbal sleep aid, and one is a prescription pain reliever. As a result, I could likely sleep through an atomic explosion. At 4:32 this morning, I was suddenly awakened from a deep sleep. I started immediately to picture all of the possible scenarios of finding Nibbles. None of them were pleasant. In one scenario, a stench led us to the dead body of Nibbles. In another scenario, someone found her by stepping on her. In yet another, gruesome scenario, Violet found a dead hamster in a toy somewhere and started giving herself dead hamster highlights. As panic started to overwhelm me, I got the sense that I should be praying, not worrying. After all, Philippians 4:6 says, “ 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Now, I’m not one to claim I hear the audible voice of God. However, rarely I feel something - it’s more like a sense not my own. I felt, “Get up”. I thought, “Now? Nah.” I felt, “Get up... Get up... Get up...” I thought, “Well, I guess I could use the bathroom.” I got up, and, as I started toward the bathroom, I felt, “No... the girls’ room first.” I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was going to find Nibbles in that room at that moment. I have never had this kind of experience before, and I know it seems silly just typing it. If it hadn’t been immediately obvious where Nibbles was, I might have dismissed my premonition as leftovers of a vivid dream or something simple and explicable like that. I heard scratching as soon as I walked in the door. Next, I saw their nylon hamper wiggling and moving in the corner. As I approached it, Nibbles did a vertical leap of about 12 inches. It scared me, as I didn’t know she had it in her. She wanted out of that hamper. I moved the hamper toward her cage and lifted her into the cage. She was VERY thirsty and tired, and was thinner and bald in a couple places, but she was alive.
I came back to bed excited (as excited as one can be at 4:30 in the morning) to have found her and at the way it happened. Mark asked me, “What happened?” I told him, “The hamster was in their hamster...” I said this a couple of times, and he said, “What?” My sleepy stupor was interfering with my ability to string together a cohesive sentence.
It’s strange, the girls have all of a sudden been into these Zhu-Zhu pets. They look like hamsters, and they have little cars they drive and slides and things that you can buy as accessories. They love these furry, little fakes. All the while, the real thing sits in her cage barely being noticed - until she runs away and give us a scare. Fortunately for Nibbles, she was not forgotten by God. (Luke 5:6-7) 6"Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. 7"Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows. I would imagine that “hamsters” could be substituted in these verses too.
When I went back to bed, a song kept running through my head - one that I haven’t sung for as long as I can remember... an old hymn - the chorus of which goes, “The Longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows. The more that I love Him more love He bestows...” Why that song? I’m not sure. I had not taken time out for devotions that night before bed. I felt a little pang of guilt that, even though God was not on my mind, I had never left His mind. Neither had my daughters’s hamster. My tiniest problem was on his radar screen. But to me, He doesn’t grow sweeter the longer I serve Him. I just am finally able to see what was there all along. He isn’t changing. I am. I am becoming more cognizant of His nature - the Truth that sets me free (and, ironically, returns hamsters to their captivity).
It’s said that cats have nine lives. I’m not sure how many hamsters have, but Nibbles has proved to have three, so far... and a more resilient rodent I haven’t seen since Jerry Mouse.
