Part 12: In which Billy gets wanderlust

Traditional Jewish mourning once included rending one's garments. Shortly after Baby's death, Billy began frenetically ripping to shreds each fresh batch of tissue and paper floor covering I put in his run. Every morning I came in to find him sitting shivah in scraps up to his ears.

It was the depths of winter now. To keep Billy off the cold floor, I set his blue hut on a stoop made from a small cardboard box. It seemed to occur to him that what was needed was less symbolization and more insulation, so he dragged the shredded paper to his hut and crammed it inside so tightly that there was hardly room for him. He had to worm his way in, his rear end wiggling and hind legs kicking behind him. Finally he'd entirely disappear, the hut would rock and heave as he turned, and then his nose and whiskers would reappear, poking out of the tissue like someone's idea of a gag gift.

He seemed a little sluggish and lacked his old zest for piddling everywhere. (It's rough owning a hamster and having worries which must be kept to oneself. How could I interrupt my friends, while they were gravely discussing the economy, to tell them I was brooding about Billy's potty habits?) Ted tried to reassure me by suggesting that with Baby gone, Billy no longer needed to stay in training for competitive pissing.

That's not to say he wasn't pissing at all. It was only that he limited himself to one small spot now, a mat of folded paper just in front of his hut. He'd wriggle his way out of his nest and then pause there on his front stoop, like an old man in a furry bathrobe looking thoughtfully up at the sky and wondering if it would rain. And sure enough, when he moved, there was evidence of a small local shower.

The greatest of my worries, however, was keeping him from going over the wall or, more literally, through and under the wall. Unlike his mother, he'd so far been content to stay inside his run, showing little curiosity about the world outside. Then one morning, I found him on my side of the wall, scuttling across the office floor. I captured and returned him, and then I found and patched the hole he'd made. I figured that his passion for chewing had gotten him started on the cardboard and that when the hole appeared, he had squirmed through it out of natural hamster curiosity. I doubted that it would happen again.

But it did. The next morning Billy was out again. And the morning after that. Over the next several weeks, he staged breakout after breakout. Some mornings I'd be in time to catch Billy scampering across the floor or exploring my abandoned bedroom slippers.

Other mornings, I'd find him in his run, looking up at me with an innocent expression that said that he'd spent the night inside playing in his wheel...and a trail of hamster shit on my side of the wall that said he hadn't. I'd patch each new hole, but within a few nights, Billy would find another weak spot to chew through. (By now, the Country Club Model hamster estate looked like a candidate for urban renewal.)

I couldn't understand Billy's sudden desire for freedom. Then, one day, I came across a bag of sunflower seeds I'd stashed on the floor under some plastic shelves. I opened the bag to give Billy a treat...and found nothing but empty husks.

It was just like the World War I song "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?":

     How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm,
     After they've seen Paree?
     How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway,
     Jazzin' around, and paintin' the town?
     How ya gonna keep 'em away from harm?
     That's a mystery.
     They'll never want to see a rake or plow,
     And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
     How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
     After they've seen Paree?

Billy had found his own Paree in a plastic bag, and there was no way to keep him home now.