Last night I discovered to my horror that Vingdragon had a bit of tangled fur! Oh no! After some advice from a Facebook group, I grabbed my smallest scissors, bribed him with a juicy snack and set to work:
Scissors have done their job and all looks well:
On this Facebook group people also recommended changing his bedding to Carefresh Crinkles and brushing him with a toothbrush if he would tolerate it, to prevent future tangles. Promptly ordered Crinkles online and bought a toothbrush today.
Will be interesting to see what he thinks about the toothbrush when he isn't getting bribed with a big piece of red bell pepper. :-)
Vingdragån really prefers to get up well after dark. The problem with that is it gets dark later and later this time of year.
He showed his face for some broccoli around 8pm yesterday and I tried to keep him out of his cage for a bit. But he was so tired!! I felt bad for him and put him back in his cage and didn't see him again that day.
He is starting to realize that I'm the food lady around these parts. Today I only had to talk to him for a few minutes before he decided to show up to get his broccoli. I then grabbed him for a little taming session on the sofa.
The pretty little one:
And on video, of course:
A few more videos from the sofa:
At this point I had a hard time trying to film him while making sure he wouldn't fall down behind the sofa!:
After about 5 minutes of this, he got impatient and I interpreted that to mean "hey lady where's the rest of my broccoli", so put him back in his cage with the rest of his broccoli:
Then I wanted a photo of him eating broccoli, but he wouldn't have it. Vingdragån last seen:
So he still doesn't like being picked up - I keep having to trick him out of his cage. Luckily that's fairly easy, as long as he's awake. And he still gets up late, normally after 9.30pm. Last night he got up at 10pm. I then had him for a little session in the guest bathroom. He's definitely a climber. I sit on the floor and he likes to climb up my back and across to my shoulder. Then he wants to climb down my back again, which isn't such a good idea, so I have to grab him somehow and return him to my lap for a safer distance of downward climbing.
Here he is eating a sunflower seed. I thought it was cute how you see his reflection there.
Omg, tonight I got him on camera tossing away his poop! Vingdragån is my 6th hamster (all of them lived long happy hamster lives!) and this is the first time (well, tonight was the second) I've seen this behaviour!
Here he is grooming himself. Watch closely, there are at least 3 poop tosses in this video:
He also ate bread crumbs while sitting in my hand while I sat on the sofa in the living room. He still doesn't like being picked up, but he's very calm once in your hands. Yes he moves from hand to hand, but at the pace of a sloth compared to my previous hamsters.
I am going to buy a new hamster ball for Vingdragån. Lada's old ball is very well used and hardly even transparent anymore. Not that Vingdragån cares, hamsters don't have eyesight worth sh*t. But I care. :-)
I haven't found a new ball of the right size and make yet though, so last night I decided he might as well try Lada's old ball.
It wasn't the greatest success at first. He basically sat down and ate his broccoli. And this was hilarious: apparently he had to go to the bathroom. So there were a few pieces of poop in his ball. He kept trying to move those away from where he was sitting, sort of pushing them out of the way. But he was in the ball, so the floor wasn't flat and the poop kept falling back towards him!
Anyway, he had a run around the guest bathroom and I removed the poop from the ball. When he got back in the ball after that, he had a decent run around the living room.
I didn't see Vingdragån much yesterday. He showed up, grabbed his sweet pea and went back to sleep. I didn't see him on Sunday either, so today he was going to be sociable whether he wanted to or not!
He didn't seem to mind when I tricked him out of his cage, but he wasn't into so much exploring in the guest bathroom either. He sat behind a roll of toilet paper and more or less went to sleep. I woke him up and he did this:
He then proceeded to climb into my pants leg and started trying to rip it apart to build a nest for himself in there. :-D That's when I decided to let him get back to his house in his cage and go to sleep... We'll try again tomorrow!
I get up at the crack of dawn, so of course I also go to bed pretty early (according to most people, 10pm is early! Who knew?! :-) ). Yesterday I got home a lot later than normal, so stayed up longer than I usually do on a work night. And Vingdragån was all smiles and super sociable and couldn't wait to get out of his cage! He came running to me when I talked to him, instead of hiding in his house. He still doesn't like when you actively grab him, but he was happy to climb into my hands to be lifted out of the cage. He had a run in the sofa first, and then in the hamster proof bathroom. There is video!
Eating carrot on the roof of his house.
Still eating carrot. Towards the end of this video, you can really see silver highlights in his coat! I know that Black hamsters' long fur is grey, not black, but here it really does look like Vingdragån might be Silver-Black.
A few tumbles in the bathroom as well:
And I just had to include this. I was worried he'd be stuck there forever!:
This morning he was also very sociable and more than happy to climb out of his cage to get some running around in the sofa done.
Right now things are looking quite good taming-wise!
