Gotcha Day: July 2004
ATB: July 18, 2005

Squeegee

I had just buried Stumpy, Lucy, and Hans. It was time to rescue some more little friends, and again I found them at the Animal Rescue League. A small, mellow, docile black bear male (Bear), and a really cute pudgy teddy-bear-faced golden hammie (Squeegee), both full-grown adults. Without further ado, I put them in their new exercise balls along with some treats and brought them home.

Bear is easy to deal with. He enjoys the human touch, and is very happy in his new habitrail setup. He also goes on walkabout regularly (okay, almost all the time) and he's always out and about, not hiding. He feeds and naps in his habitrail, but whenever I'm around he insists on his wandering adventure. A lot of the time he'll climb up to Squeegee's habitrail and hang out on the other side of the bars. Twice he's actually gotten inside, but even though I know they made whoopee, no litters ever resulted. Phew!

Squeegee is also very happy in her new home, but she was very skittish around me at the beginning. She hid when she noticed me looking in on her, and every now and then she'd nip at me. It took a little time to gain her trust, but nce that happened she became a fun little critter to interact with. Quite amazingly, she meticulously uses her little litter box - it's quite cute. Like all female goldens, when she goes on walkabout she raids the rabbit food and stashes it all under the bathtub (just like Kiwi and Dini did), so she needs to be managed more closely than Bear. A lot of rabbit food has disappeared, and I can only imagine the mess under there. She has also chewed her way out of many exercise balls (sometimes she gets out of a brand new ball on the first day of chewing on it, so she keeps me on my toes.

July 18, 2005: I was sitting in the living room having a the first bites of a long-overdue dinner. She came out of her little sleep coccoon and into the "living room" of her habitrail, and as soon as she was inside the module, just sort of fell there. I've seen this a few times before and I was pretty sure I knew what it meant before I touched her. My touch confirmed my worst fears - her body was cool and she was hardly moving, but still alive. Like many before her, Squeegee knew her time was here and came out to tell me. I held her close to my face, telling her it was okay and not to be afraid, between the sobs. She clicked and chirped, reached out a few times perhaps to take the paw of some unseen guide to the Bridge, gasped a few times are her life slowly wound down to nothingness. Just before the end she jumped out of my hands a few times, forcing me to play juggle-the-hamster to catch her and hold her close. She didn't fight me, but she wanted one more run. I couldn't give it to her - she couldn't run anyway, her body wasn't responding the way she knew, and there was no question she was aware that things had changed for her. A few more gasps, one or two more clicks, and then she settled into her long sleep. There were no seizures this time, and only a short transition from going to gone. Her passing was fairly peaceful, and now I fight off the guilt and regrets of any and every little thing that I think could have been done differently.

Goodbye my sweet little Squeegeebeans. I hope you were happy here. I hope the home I gave you was to your liking.


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