So here I am trying to get the hang of this 'blog' thing. Bear with me. -Talking of bears the only thing that resembles a bear in my shop is a hamster. We sell quite a few of these great little creatures. They come in all sorts of colours and have long or short hair. They have adorable faces and tiny plump bodies The most popular type are the good old fashioned Syrian - what we old folk used to call the 'golden hamster'. There is nothing better than seeing a family come in with a couple of children and deciding on which type of cage they want and which specific hamster they will take home with them. These furry bundles make a good starter pet so long as they are treated with care and respect. Poor things only tend to bite when they are frightened or suddenly see a large digit approaching at speed. I keep telling people that they must be slow and gentle as poor old Hammy hamster has bad eyesight.
Never mind hamsters having bad eyesight. Many years ago before there were restrictions on transporting animals our delivery of hamster would arrive by train. The local station staff would ring us and tell us that the hamsters had arrived and we would pop up to our main line station and collect them. They were always well packed with lots of provisions and bedding so never seemed to suffer. In fact the station staff used to enjoy their hamster sitting and in time became quite a bunch of hamster experts. I remember one night our delivery of hamsters was on a delayed train. We were very worried about them, imagining they might have been abandoned on some remote platform and left for the night to freeze. We needn't have worried though as our local station staff had kept the station parcel office open specially for us and stayed at their desk until we had collected our squeaking box. I don't think that the hamsters even realised that there had been a problem.
On the other hand I do remember my Father collecting some hamsters and instead of taking them straight back to the shop he decided to take out some deliveries first. He kept the hamsters on the seat next to him so that he could keep an eye on them, from time to time he peered in through the wire window in their box and just as he was about to reach the shop he stopped at a set of traffic lights, glanced at the box and found it empty. All the hamsters had escaped. He pulled over and started the great hamster search. He immediately caught quite a few, but on a quick count of heads found that there were 10 missing. For up to a week later we kept finding an odd hamster in all parts of the van. Even the engine was a playground. I remember on morning being driven to school and a little furry creature running along the dashboard. Then another was found in the seat foam having made himself a very nice den. In the end we recovered all the missing bundles. They had travelled many miles and if they had looked out of the window would have enjoyed the scenery too! A few weeks later- cleaned and fully recovered they were offered for sale. I don't think we let on to our customers how well travelled their new pets were though.
The train station staff may have been great hamster experts, but I don't think that our local Post Office staff view us with as much favour. Our live crickets, locus, mealworms and other live creepy crawlies which we feed to our reptiles are - or should I say 'were'-delivered to us by the Royal Mail. All went well for many months until a box was damaged in transit. Our local Post Office received the consignment. Inside were various boxes of creepy crawlies. One of which had been split and the contense had escaped. A whole box of live crickets were hopping around in the Mail Room. These small creatures do no harm, and will die without heat, but for the few hours they were loose in the Post Office I think they caused rather a lot of upset. I guess some one not knowing what they were would maybe think that they were being attacked by some giant fleas or some horrible chirruping monster fly. Our local Postman said that they are still talking about the incident now many years later.