The Pet Project – Part 5

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It’s been quite a while since we did an update post on Stacy – our pet Syrian hamster. Well, briefly put – she’s just over a year old old, which in Syrian Hamster years means that she’s middle-age now. Looking at how she was a year ago when we first ‘adopted’ her as the fifth member of our family:

After we couldn’t discourage her from gnawing the paint off her cage bars, we switched to an aquarium-styled tank instead, and moved her cage to the coolest part of the house – our Master bedroom LOL. We have to dress the accessories and toys in her cage with quite a bit of thought though, as every thing – even the water bottle – is a gadget for her to use and escape the enclosure!

She’s still exploring her current enclosure everyday – even 8 months since moving into it! In fact, our two kids’ love observing her try to reach for the tank’s wire-mesh cover but climbing up on everything she can get her paws on. Stacy is absolutely fearless! On several mornings now, we’ve woken up to see her water bottle on the ground as she was – somehow – able to climb on top of the water bottle and chew through the string that secures it to the lid.

With the exception of Peter whom we think is still too young to handle her, Stacy seems comfortable being carried by Ling and Hannah, though being hamsters, Syrians aren’t particularly affectionate to humans to begin with.

She’s still very much a night creature. She’ll sleep soundly through the day, and be up to play usually from around 8:30PM onwards or later.

She can be a bit of a picky eater too, including rejecting specific food pellet types. But once she likes a particular brand of trail mix, she’ll pretty much happily eat it all the time.

She can nip – and it’s quite painful if she sinks her teeth into your finger – though not because she’s scared. Most of the time, it’s because she thinks my finger is food.:)

Stacy with Ling.
She loves corn on the cob!
Escape antics!
More Escape Antics! She was easily able to climb to the top of this water bottle even when we’d moved away all toys surrounding it. Reckon her front paws are strong enough to foist herself up past the nozzle. We’ve since changed her water bottle to one that is secured by string directly on the lid, but she’s still – occasionally – able to climb right up.
She’ll tear through a toilet roll in a single night.

All things considered though, Stacy has been extremely easy to care for. We’re mindful though of the fairly short lifespans of hamsters in general, so when the time comes, we’d need to work with our kids to deal with her passing.