Last week, we bought a hamster. This afternoon, I got a call at work from my son, who was yelling something into the phone. On the third try, I understood it: “Fluffy had babies!”
I had noticed she was a little bit fat. Did it occur to me that she might be pregnant? It did not.
I thought she might need a little more time on the exercise wheel, but I thought we were getting a pristine hamster.
So, okay . . . the good news is we get to see something that’s really amazing to me: Nature has programmed this little creature as a survival machine, so when she suddenly finds herself in possession of five little babies, instead of going woozy with shock, she knows to build them a little nest, put them in it, nurse them, and so on . . .