A hammy ending....

As children, my brother and I came, eventually, to own Hammy. The tubbiest, warmest little hamster in the entire world.

He used to put his little paws up on the bars of his cage and 'wave' at us in the mornings. Of course, given the fatality rate of our pets thus far, my brother and I were hesitant to get too close to the new addition. We cleaned his cage in a business-like manner and stoically ignored his plaintive cries to be let out, just for a moment.

As months passed, we began to reconsider. Day after day those little gimlet eyes would fix on us wetly. Little paws would clutch the bars, nose would quiver. Where’s the harm, we thought? He’ll be O.K. So one evening, after much hemming and hawing, we lifted our furry friend from his cage and strode out into the back yard, where shone a glittering roof of stars and a moon so big you could lick it. I carefully nudged the wee fellah onto the lawn and he nearly swooned at the sheer immensity of the outside world. Perhaps he remembered the free air in some dim primordial corner of his brain.

Let free, he scampered to and fro, hither and thither, and my brother and I kept close watch, love welling in our hearts.
So precious! Still – was it safe out here? I could feel a tiny bit of tension in my jaw, but doggone it, he deserved this freedom. He had outlasted all of our previous pets by almost a year.

After an hour of happy wandering on Hammy’s part, I said to my brother, “Well, perhaps we should all call it a night.”

We looked over at Hammy, whose eyes shone with a small, wordless kind of gratitude. He knew what freedom was.
His William Wallace moment. He scratched his ear and sniffled contentedly.

Then a great grey owl swooped down like a silent stealth bomber, snatched Hammy with incisor-like talons and bucked up and away into the inky dark; wings denting the air. Predator and prey vanished into the gloom. The night held its breath.
A grey feather drifted to the lawn, like the mark of an assassin.

“Well” said my brother after a while,

“we had better go and tell mother.”