writer's workshop trial

i've seen a couple of my friends participate in mama kat's writer's workshop but i've never had much to contribute to any of her prompts...until now!

so the prompt that i have chosen is to describe the most destructive thing your pet has done. and this story is quite unique, i believe.

when i was 7 years old i begged my parents for a hamster. i'm not sure why. i must have had a friend who had them or something. anyway, we finally went to the pet store at northcross mall and picked up an adorable little guy that i named hammy. obviously, i didn't hit my creative stride until later in life. hammy didn't live in one of those crazy plastic cages (like sam had in garden state...haha!). he lived in a white wire cage with a red plastic top and bottom.

i don't know how familiar you guys are with hamsters but if they can squeeze their little heads through an opening, they can squeeze their fat bellies through too. it's pretty fascinating, really. so, as you can guess, hammy started escaping from his cage on a nightly basis. i have no idea where he would go or how we ever found him but we always did.

one morning (the day ann richards became governor of texas) i woke up to some terrible news. hammy had escaped his cage once again but this time, something bad happened. i guess now would be the time for me to tell you all that we also had a dog, a big german sheppard named fritz. apparently fritz sat on hammy and squished him to death.

i was devastated. i don't know if my mom had been planning this all along or if the death of the family hamster triggered it but she kept my sister and me home from school that day. she took us to ann richards' inauguration and on the way home we went to the pet store and got a new hamster.

i have a feeling that hammy didn't meet his maker quite the way the story was told to me but i don't care. i'm glad my parents shielded me from the details surrounding hammy's death. as it was, i grew up feeling sad for fritz because he had accidentally killed another animal. and that's the way i prefer to remember it. i would later end up resenting fritz for another reason anyway.