Speedy and Mr. Yum Yums

We have house-guests!! Riley has been doing really good in school lately, and his reward (if you can call it that) was to get to bring the hamsters home for fall break. David fails to see how this qualifies as a reward. Riley has wanted hamsters for a long time now, and I had a hamster when I was about his age, so I'm game (of course) and you KNOW Regan's on board, but Dad is the lone hold out. Of course, I can't say as I blame him, they are rodents, they do smell like pee, and I would be the one taking care of them after the first week or two. The things we would do for our kids though, right?

So, we have Speedy and Mr. Yum Yums for the next 3.5 weeks for fall break. One of those weeks we will be in Ohio, so I had to find another foster home for that week. But tonight was quite the adventure. First of all, I should state that we are also dog sitting for my in-laws who (and I'm so superman jealous) are in San Francisco right now. Their dog, Sasha is old and frail and persnickety. She has special medication that must be rolled in peanut butter and licked off one's finger. She needs mineral oil mixed with chicken broth to get the bowels moving, and a special kidney diet of soft food mixed with crunchy kibble to keep the kidney's from working overtime, if you know what I'm saying...

Now, add in two neurotic hamsters and a cat that thinks we just got him the tastiest snack in the world, all he has to do is figure out how to get said snack. It's a conundrum, an enigma wrapped in a mystery, that he is bound and determined to figure out before they go back to school. So tonight, after all their begging and pleading and whining and crying, I decide to let the kids put a hamster in one of those plastic exercise balls so he can run around and heck, tease the cat a little. I thought the cat would get a big kick out of getting his lunch "to go"! We grab a random hamster (turns out it was Speedy) and put him in the ball. Hilarity ensues. Cat is mesmerized, doesn't even try to swat him around too much, old dog is shaking like an F5 tornado is bearing down on us at any minute, our dog Bailey is kinda checking things out, what the heck is all the ruckus about, you know. So after about 10 minutes in the ball it's time for Speedy to go home.

Well, me being the grown up, and with faster reflexes, my vast experience with the rodent family, I open the ball, dump little Speedy into my hands, and then learn how he got the name Speedy. That little thing flew out of my hand, hit the dining room chair, and took off like a rocket! And my first instinct is to grab the cat and get him out of the way before Speedy is Meow Mix. But before I can do that, Bailey, good ole trusty Border Collie Bailey, steps in and grabs Speedy with his mouth. All you could see was two back feet sticking out of Bailey's lips, running in place like a Scooby Doo cartoon. Riley has an INSTANT meltdown, crying and fearing for Speedy's life. I just yell at the top of my lungs, BAILEY DROP HIM! And David is yelling at us, I TOLD YOU TO PUT THEM IN THE BATHROOM (as he's on his computer playing armchair quarterback to my little dilemma) and thankfully Bailey spit him right out. After a tense few minutes of racing around the dining room and nearly knocking myself out on the table legs a few times, Riley managed to scoop him up, I took him to examine him for teeth marks, and other than being a little more moist than he was originally, he was still in tact. And oddly enough, Ricky just sat there and enjoyed the show.

So, who said my life isn't a zoo??