Hamsters gone crazy!

Last weekend my wife and the two kids aged 4 and 3 went to a pet shop.

The pet shop had too many hamsters and were giving them up for adoption. My kids and wife wanted to get 2 hamsters.

My cousin had a hamster and had an enclosure with all the wheel and stuff. Her hamster had died of cancer a couple of months back. So we borrowed the equipment from my cousin and on Sunday we went to collect 2 hamsters from the pet shop. We bought pet food and sand bath from the shop.

They gave us 2 winter white sapphire breed hamsters that had been living together in the same cage at the shop.

We put them into our enclosure and they were alright with it and each other. While we were going home, they mostly stayed in this little soap box like thing. It was a tight fit for both of them but they huddled together.

When we got home my wife filled the soap box thing with the bath sand.

The 2 hamsters came out and started to explore the enclosure. Then after a while we heard some high pitched shrieks and squels. Then we saw them fighting. The bigger hamster (Celeste) wanted to get onto the wheel but the smaller (Michelle) (My kids named them don't ask me why) one screamed at Celeste and they fought. Then Michelle went into the soap box and started bathing herself in the bath sand. And she did not come out. Whenever Celeste wanted to get into the soap box, Michelle would bite her.

We thought that Michelle was one selfish bitch. Only wanting the sand bath all to herself. Anyway she never came out of the soap box. And everytime Celeste got close we would hear a shriek.

Overnight.....and next morning we saw that Celeste had a cut on her nose. Michelle was still in the soap box. I told my wife that we should buy another soap box for Celeste because she had to sleep on the wheel.

So we went to buy another soap box. We put it in and Celeste liked it.

My wife wanted to change the bedding of the enclosure so we took the 2 hamsters out. After that we put Celeste back in first and played with Michelle (they have this ball thing that the hamster can run inside on the floor)

When we put Michelle back into the enclosure, Celeste ATTACKED her. She pounced on her and bit and bit and bit her on the back and butt! The screams from Michelle were terrible!

Michelle ran into the soap box and hid there.

At that moment we realised that we were wrong. Celeste who is bigger was attacking Michelle who is smaller, not the other way around. And Michelle was too scared and injured to fight back. So she hid in the soap box. She did not come out to eat nor drink for 2 day! I guess I would do the same if there was this person outside, 1.5 times my size waiting to bite me and beat me up.

We rushed out to get another cage from a pet shop nearby and quickly put them in seperate cages.

I told the kids, that was a good example of how we should always know the full story before we start passing judgment and labelling people names.

Anyway right now Michelle has been very lethargic and weak. She has not eaten anything and drunk very little water. I think she's dying. We'll do our best to feed her some protein mixture and water with a syringe. Her wounds don't look that serious but I am no vet.

Hopefully we can nurse her back to health, but it doesn't look promising.