Vingdragån's 3rd day

Vingdragån is our 6th hamster and yet… Every Single Time I forget how frustrating it is with a new hamster! He isn't too skittish, but insists on not going anywhere near my hand. Have tried enticing him with broccoli (no thanks), cucumber (nope), dried banana (bwahahaha, no), cereal flakes (u kidding bro?), and right now asparagus. No luck.

This is the most I've seen of him today and he never did grab that piece of cereal:

Update: I got tired of waiting and therefore tricked him a little bit...

Step 1: find egg carton, cut holes, place asparagus on top.

Here he is eating asparagus!

Step 2: being a hamster, he found the egg carton super exciting and climbed in.

Gotcha!

Step 3: grab egg carton containing hamster and place in travel cage. Move person and hamster to hamster-escape-proof bathroom.

Commence handling experience.

He's adorable. I kind of doubt he'll climb into the egg carton again now though...

Vingdragån in the house!

I picked up Min dyreverdens Merkur in Oslo today, and promptly renamed him Vingdragån!

He seems so calm! Not a worry in the world. I'm sure we'll become friends quickly! He'll have a day or two to get used to his new surroundings first, though.

New hamster soon

So one of these little beautiful ones will be moving in this Thursday! A black longhaired male.

I'm getting him from Min dyreverdens hamsteroppdrett (www.mindyreverden.com), where I also stole this picture.

So excited!

RIP Lada

Lada never did make it over 100 grams, but he lived a long & (I think) happy life!

He died some time during the night and I found him this morning. 2 years and 2 months old.

Thanks for all the hard work, Lada!

82 grams!

Right. So I was going to write about how Lada is doing better and his neck has been fine lately.

A few recent photos:

Looking sharp there. :-)

And tonight he actually fit a huge piece of carrot in his mouth. Never thought he would manage, he even struggled with it for long enough for me to get my camera out.

The magic moment:

And he had a run around the living room for almost an hour tonight, all was well!

Until I weighed him. He's down to 82 grams now!!! He's around 10 months old and most definitely should weigh more than that!

But otherwise he seems fine.

Much the same

These pictures are from last night. He's better again now, I think, so I don't know what's going on…

He seems as healthy as he's ever been, eating his new food and drinking his vitamin-enhanced water. Still a little less hairy in the neck area than elsewhere, but not as bad as two weeks ago.

Gotten worse?

So I'm not too thrilled about this. Tonight I had the impression that Lada's neck has gotten worse again. It is really hard to tell, but it seemed to me like his neck fur is thinner again.

Tonight's picture:

Of course he is leaning forwards in this photo, so it's more obvious then. But even with that taken into consideration…

I will not be terribly surprised if there's another trip to the vet in the not-too-distant future.