Memory lane: Esther and the Hamsters

For our fifth movie, "Esther and the King," there's a scene where the various maidens are trying to outdo one another in their preparations to see the king. One of them believes that hair and make-up are the answer to winning the king's affection, so she overdoes both. Another overdoes the jewelry. Another overdoes perfume. But the one that has impacted me personally the most is the one who believed that it was the clothes she wore that would make the difference.

She decides that she needs an over-the-top pink frilly gown, and to make it, she relies on a sewing machine powered by a hamster (called a "Hampster-Matic" in the movie). My daughters already have a hamster (a huge one called "Goliath"), but we determine that one is not enough -- in case it decides it's sleepy at the moment we need it do turn the sewing wheel. So Tom L, our props manager, goes to a local pet store and picks up five dwarf hamsters.

We end up shooting the scene, and before we're done with our two second shot, we've tried all five hamsters in an effort to find one who would keep moving (apparently, we've never heard the expression never work with children or animals, because we tend to do both much more than is sensible). But we finally get what we need.

My youngest daughter, Alexandra, finds out that Tom has "inelegant" plans for disposing of the hamsters, so she conspires with my wife to provide "temporary" housing for the hamsters. The hamsters are divided by gender into a couple of aquariums that will serve as their houses, and they are brought home, where they housed in our hallway linen closet.

A couple of months pass by, and I'm walking down the hallway, and I see these five pairs of eyes looking up at me from an aquarium, and I look into one of my daughters rooms, where I see my wife working on cleaning out another aquarium with little critters running around. Then I notice more aquariums. Now, I was no math major, but even I can clearly see that we have more hamsters now than we have had before. So I make an innocent inquiry, only to be told that there was some confusion during the gender separation process, and now in addition to the original five (plus Goliath), we are now the proud owners of more than a dozen additional hamsters. I'd been a little busy, so I had somehow managed to fail to notice the proliferation of aquariums, let alone hamsters.

To try to get a handle on the process, my wife had taken the hamsters to a local veterinarian for gender identification. Apparently, this is not easy on a hamster, because within a few weeks, our hamster population is up to 27.

Unless you're willing to utilize one of the inelegant hamster reduction techniques (such as snakes), it's not that easy to get rid of hamsters. Their proliferate nature makes most pet stores less than eager to accept bundles delivered to their door stops. Their sometimes less-than-cuddly natures makes giving them away to other loving households a little tricky, too. But, over time, we are able to find homes for a number of them, and a pet store agrees to take a litter. A couple of them have succumbed to early demises due to their somewhat fragile constitutions. But, now, about nine months later, we still have about 10 that live with us, and I think those will probably live out the remainder of their golden years (I believe their expected lifespan is about 2 years) with us. That is, unless somebody expresses an interest. (Hint, hint -- anyone?)

We haven't had a litter in several months, so we feel like we have a handle on the gender issue.

Still, next time, should I, in a weak moment, decide we need animals in a movie again, I must pay closer attention to the complete plan of what to do with them afterwards.