I heard a noise -

I went out to the car to get a bag that I needed and when I got there I remembered that I wanted to clean out my trunk so I took everything out of it and then realized that the inside needed a good cleaning too because the kids sort of drop things and the back of the front seat and the dashboard are perfect places to rest their feet and sometimes there is mud so anyway...one thing led to another and I was just cleaning away out there when I heard a noise. I thought it was Oliver but then I realized when I went to throw some stuff from the car away that it was in the garbage can out there. Generally, I do have my camera somewhere on me and this time it was in my apron pocket so I snapped a picture of the guilty party.

Then I dumped him into a garbage bag and took him out to the big garbage can. Shades of the hamster that I threw away once...Sometime I may tell you that story. It's a good one. Oh, fine...
Once, way back when we lived on Stonecliffe Dr., the girls stayed with Grandma while Bryan and I went on a trip. Now Grandma feels the way I feel, only 10 times stronger, about rodents so the fact that she took Jayme to Earl May and let her look at the hamsters says a lot. We get back home and Jayme {about age 7 or 8} talks us into letting her get a hamster. So then we have to get the cage and it is the kind that you can attach tubes to and other houses and it just kept growing. It lived in the basement. All our bedrooms were upstairs and down the hall. Every night it was in its cage with the doors shut tightly. In the morning, Jayme's clothes in her drawers were chewed and there was little paper bits everywhere but the hamster was in it's cage with the doors shut and everything in its place. So MYSTERIOUS. Time passes and one night Ashley yells from her room. Something to the effect of "THE HAMSTER IS IN MY ROOM", that type of thing. So we catch the hamster and put it back where it belongs. Mind you, when we went to put it back all the doors are shut the tubes are all attached, etc. Weird. So I got drastic. I duct taped the doors shut, wrapped duct tape around tubes where they connected and in general made the thing a fortress of duct tape. There will be no more escaping. A couple days go by and I am sound asleep in our room, the door is shut and I feel something scurry across my face. I sit up quite quickly and there is the hamster ON MY PILLOW just staring at me. It is midnight, it is January, it is below zero outside but I got up, grabbed the pillowcase {which the hamster had scurried into}went downstairs, dumped the hamster into the cage which, by the way, was still all duct taped and shut, picked up the entire twisty tube cage concoction and went out the garage and around the side of the house and dumped it into the big garbage can. Washed my hands, got a new pillowcase, shuddered a few times, went back to bed. In the morning Jayme said, "Hey, where's my hamster?"

"IN THE GARBAGE OUTSIDE." said the mother 

"WHY?" 

"Because, I won't spend one more night having him run across my face. If he wants to be free so bad he can just be free at the dump." said the heartless mother. 

"Can I go see" 

"Sure, just don't ask me to bring it back in" said the still heartless mother

Three sub-zero days later 

{of course I threw it away right after the garbage had been collected}

Bryan went out to throw some garbage into the can and there, sitting on top of the other stuff we had thrown in on top of the cage all week, was the hamster, just staring up at him. 

Heartless again said, "I don't care, he's not coming in this house again."

There are those who say that he is still at the dump gaining weight and strength so that he can come and have his revenge on me someday. 

I say, "Bring it, hamster, and you will join the deer on my basement wall."