Vingdragon making an appearance

He's still not the most sociable hamster ever, but I do manage to lure him out occasionally.

A little outing tonight, with a piece of bread for a snack.

A little outing in the sand box

Vingdragån finally got the point with the box of sand tonight. He was out & about as his cage was getting cleaned.

Evening snack

A few photos of Vingdragån's fur from last night. He's 5.5 months old now.

Tired hamster won't say hi

My parents stopped by yesterday and wanted to meet Vingdragån. It was 6.30pm, so really, he could have done them the favour of waking up. But he didn't! He didn't show his little face until 10pm yesterday, and even then he didn't exactly look wide awake :-D

4 months old

Vingdragon turned 4 months old yesterday and got some snacks to celebrate. He didn't like it though and just left pieces everywhere. :-D

I had to cut tangles out of his fur again yesterday, so he doesn't have the longest "skirt" right now.

Ikea to the rescue

My husband went to Ikea yesterday and bought plastic place mats for Vingdragån. 12 of them! Yes, a hamster needs plastic place mats - they make for great walls in an indoor enclosure for them! Hubby bought these: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80311244/

And Vingdragån had his first outing there last night. It's been hot the last few days with temps at +30 C, so I also finally got around to providing him with a sand bath. He was confused at first, but started digging in the sand eventually.

Easy to build with a little bit of tape and provides lots of room that the hamster can't escape from! I can leave him alone in there. :-)

And very very easy to store when not in use!!

A little video of Vingdragån's first encounter with sand:

Hamster not doing the expected

So, Vingdragån enjoys his occasional dried mealworm. I often hold the box by the cage door and he helps himself right out of the box.

Today he was ambling around on his roof, and I thought it would be a cute video to put the box of mealworms right there and let him have a go at it:

Hamster + toothbrush = true

Last night I discovered to my horror that Vingdragon had a bit of tangled fur! Oh no! After some advice from a Facebook group, I grabbed my smallest scissors, bribed him with a juicy snack and set to work:

Scissors have done their job and all looks well:

On this Facebook group people also recommended changing his bedding to Carefresh Crinkles and brushing him with a toothbrush if he would tolerate it, to prevent future tangles. Promptly ordered Crinkles online and bought a toothbrush today. 

Will be interesting to see what he thinks about the toothbrush when he isn't getting bribed with a big piece of red bell pepper. :-)

Yesterday's outing

He got up late yesterday too and was out of his cage for all of 5 minutes. Here he is back in his cage.

Sleeping in

Vingdragån really prefers to get up well after dark. The problem with that is it gets dark later and later this time of year.

He showed his face for some broccoli around 8pm yesterday and I tried to keep him out of his cage for a bit. But he was so tired!! I felt bad for him and put him back in his cage and didn't see him again that day.

The food lady

He is starting to realize that I'm the food lady around these parts. Today I only had to talk to him for a few minutes before he decided to show up to get his broccoli. I then grabbed him for a little taming session on the sofa.

The pretty little one:

And on video, of course:

A few more videos from the sofa:

At this point I had a hard time trying to film him while making sure he wouldn't fall down behind the sofa!:

After about 5 minutes of this, he got impatient and I interpreted that to mean "hey lady where's the rest of my broccoli", so put him back in his cage with the rest of his broccoli:

Then I wanted a photo of him eating broccoli, but he wouldn't have it. Vingdragån last seen:

Still doesn't like being picked up

So he still doesn't like being picked up - I keep having to trick him out of his cage. Luckily that's fairly easy, as long as he's awake. And he still gets up late, normally after 9.30pm. Last night he got up at 10pm. I then had him for a little session in the guest bathroom. He's definitely a climber. I sit on the floor and he likes to climb up my back and across to my shoulder. Then he wants to climb down my back again, which isn't such a good idea, so I have to grab him somehow and return him to my lap for a safer distance of downward climbing.

Here he is eating a sunflower seed. I thought it was cute how you see his reflection there.

Tonight's outing

Omg, tonight I got him on camera tossing away his poop! Vingdragån is my 6th hamster (all of them lived long happy hamster lives!) and this is the first time (well, tonight was the second) I've seen this behaviour!

Here he is grooming himself. Watch closely, there are at least 3 poop tosses in this video:

He also ate bread crumbs while sitting in my hand while I sat on the sofa in the living room. He still doesn't like being picked up, but he's very calm once in your hands. Yes he moves from hand to hand, but at the pace of a sloth compared to my previous hamsters.

Testing Lada's hamster ball

I am going to buy a new hamster ball for Vingdragån. Lada's old ball is very well used and hardly even transparent anymore. Not that Vingdragån cares, hamsters don't have eyesight worth sh*t. But I care. :-)

I haven't found a new ball of the right size and make yet though, so last night I decided he might as well try Lada's old ball.

It wasn't the greatest success at first. He basically sat down and ate his broccoli. And this was hilarious: apparently he had to go to the bathroom. So there were a few pieces of poop in his ball. He kept trying to move those away from where he was sitting, sort of pushing them out of the way. But he was in the ball, so the floor wasn't flat and the poop kept falling back towards him!

Anyway, he had a run around the guest bathroom and I removed the poop from the ball. When he got back in the ball after that, he had a decent run around the living room.

Last night's video evidence:

Hamster on the sofa

Yesterday started out with Vingdragån being quite timid!

But about an hour or so after that, he decided it was time to get up. He got to run around on the sofa a little bit.

Tired hamster

I didn't see Vingdragån much yesterday. He showed up, grabbed his sweet pea and went back to sleep. I didn't see him on Sunday either, so today he was going to be sociable whether he wanted to or not!

He didn't seem to mind when I tricked him out of his cage, but he wasn't into so much exploring in the guest bathroom either. He sat behind a roll of toilet paper and more or less went to sleep. I woke him up and he did this:

He then proceeded to climb into my pants leg and started trying to rip it apart to build a nest for himself in there. :-D That's when I decided to let him get back to his house in his cage and go to sleep... We'll try again tomorrow!

10 seconds of cuteness

As it says.

You can really see where his long fur will grow, in the grey areas there behind his ears and from his front paws back along his sides and bum!

Or the most obvious one: go to bed late

I get up at the crack of dawn, so of course I also go to bed pretty early (according to most people, 10pm is early! Who knew?! :-) ). Yesterday I got home a lot later than normal, so stayed up longer than I usually do on a work night. And Vingdragån was all smiles and super sociable and couldn't wait to get out of his cage! He came running to me when I talked to him, instead of hiding in his house. He still doesn't like when you actively grab him, but he was happy to climb into my hands to be lifted out of the cage. He had a run in the sofa first, and then in the hamster proof bathroom. There is video!

Eating carrot on the roof of his house.

Still eating carrot. Towards the end of this video, you can really see silver highlights in his coat! I know that Black hamsters' long fur is grey, not black, but here it really does look like Vingdragån might be Silver-Black.

A few tumbles in the bathroom as well:

And I just had to include this. I was worried he'd be stuck there forever!:

This morning he was also very sociable and more than happy to climb out of his cage to get some running around in the sofa done.

Right now things are looking quite good taming-wise!

Or don't get up in the morning

I actually got up at 5.15 this morning to have more time for Vingdragån. Guess who was fast asleep! He didn't start moving about in his house until 6am and then I had to get ready to leave, so didn't see him this morning. Oh well. Will try again tomorrow...

Another solution: getting up in the morning

I normally get up for work at 5.30am on weekdays. I know it's insane. But Vingdragån is awake and kicking at that time of morning, which is great! I had him out of his cage yesterday morning, and this morning he was practically jumping up & down waiting to get out. He still didn't want me to lift him out of the cage, but he was more than ready to climb out on his own. Maybe I should start getting up 15 minutes earlier, so I really have time for him in the morning.... I'll have a think about that! ;-)

On the sofa this morning (kinda hard to handle the phone with one hand and hamster with the other at, did I mention that, 5.30 in the morning!):

He was so easy to deal with this morning, which is strange since he was a total scardycat last night and ran away when I approached his cage. Guess he's just more sociable at 5.30am than 8pm.

And broccoli. The solution is also broccoli.

This evening he climbed onto his roof after hearing rumors of broccoli. He got some broccoli and allowed me to catch him without too many protests for a little taming session in the hamster-proof bathroom.

Carrots. The solution is carrots.

Yesterday I filmed Vingdragån taking a piece of carrot from my fingers. Just now he got up in the middle of the day - I heard he was having a snack and offered him more carrot, he came up to get it. In the middle of the day. :-) Next step - making him climb into my hand to fetch it.

Vingdragån day 8

Today he picked up a piece of carrot from my fingers. He won't climb into my hand, but he let me watch him do the morning grooming on the roof of his house. He then went into the egg carton and got a short run in the bathroom, but I took him back to his cage when he climbed into the travel cage by himself. The idea is egg carton = I want to run in the bathroom, climbing back into travel cage = I want to go home. We'll see if he agrees ;-)

The photographic evidence:

Vingdragån day 4

So I used the egg carton trick again last night. Easy peasy. However, he seemed a little more skittish and was very unhappy about being picked up. Once in my hands, all was fine, but the process of being grabbed = very much not his favourite thing!

A few pictures from last night:

This morning he took food from my hand for the first time, but got scared when he realised it was my hand! :-)

Vingdragån's 3rd day

Vingdragån is our 6th hamster and yet… Every Single Time I forget how frustrating it is with a new hamster! He isn't too skittish, but insists on not going anywhere near my hand. Have tried enticing him with broccoli (no thanks), cucumber (nope), dried banana (bwahahaha, no), cereal flakes (u kidding bro?), and right now asparagus. No luck.

This is the most I've seen of him today and he never did grab that piece of cereal:

Update: I got tired of waiting and therefore tricked him a little bit...

Step 1: find egg carton, cut holes, place asparagus on top.

Here he is eating asparagus!

Step 2: being a hamster, he found the egg carton super exciting and climbed in.

Gotcha!

Step 3: grab egg carton containing hamster and place in travel cage. Move person and hamster to hamster-escape-proof bathroom.

Commence handling experience.

He's adorable. I kind of doubt he'll climb into the egg carton again now though...

Vingdragån in the house!

I picked up Min dyreverdens Merkur in Oslo today, and promptly renamed him Vingdragån!

He seems so calm! Not a worry in the world. I'm sure we'll become friends quickly! He'll have a day or two to get used to his new surroundings first, though.

New hamster soon

So one of these little beautiful ones will be moving in this Thursday! A black longhaired male.

I'm getting him from Min dyreverdens hamsteroppdrett (www.mindyreverden.com), where I also stole this picture.

So excited!

RIP Lada

Lada never did make it over 100 grams, but he lived a long & (I think) happy life!

He died some time during the night and I found him this morning. 2 years and 2 months old.

Thanks for all the hard work, Lada!