Wookie In Heaven

In 2001, On June 29th as it were, I was scheduled to have all four of my wisdom teeth removed. A week or so prior my friend Tiffany and I discussed the probability that my cheeks would swell like a hamster after the surgery. My cheeks are round as it is, but we imagined that the trauma would round them out to new widths. If you know Tiffany at all, you know that she loves rodents. It is as though they are drawn to her:



Anyway, Tiff and I decided I should buy a little rodent friend of my own to commemorate the surgery. We made a trip to a tiny local pet shop that was once a house. We stepped into a side room where the owners kept all the hamsters. I noticed a cute little brown hamster with the sweetest eyes. She was small, and to me she definitely looked like a girl and I liked that. I held her close to my face and examined her eyes. She had to be mine. I picked out a white and pink two level cage for her. Tiffany gave me an old purple hamster ball for her to run freely about my house and we were set. I named her Wookie.

Wookie brought me joy for the next two years. She was very smart, and learned how to open her cage. I realized this one day when she was missing from her cage, with the door ajar. I was so scared she may have run outside or been stepped on. I called her name and she came scurrying down the hall. She stood on my foot and looked up at me. She was rad. In 2003 while I was in Africa Matt and Stephanie took care of her for me, and she died while I was gone. Matt informed me and the rest of the family through an obituary he wrote about her short life. He found this picture recently and named it "wookie in heaven."



I miss that little face. My favorite was to feed her baby carrots and watch her push it into her cheek forcing her cheek outward. I miss that fatty.