8 - 3 = 5

Yesterday evening, I found DD sitting on the floor on top of the staircase outside my room, her lower back leaning to the wall, her head buried in her hands on her knees. She was weeping. The maid sat quietly beside her.

The maid told me that three baby hamsters were dead. Two of them had the heads severed. We suspected Scaredy, the father was the culprit. He was rough with the babies.

The maid removed Scaredy from the cage and put him in the exercise ball. After Maghrib prayer, DD and I went to the pet shop to get a new cage for Scaredy.

While we were on the way to the shop, DD made a phone call to DH. Amidst her sobs, she managed to relate the incident to him.

At the shop, we explained what had happened to the shopkeeper. She said we must remove Scaredy from the cage immediately, which we had already done. Then she said we must not touch the babies, the mother or clean the cage for 8 days. Opps! The maid and DD had already touched the babies.

Apparently they had contaminated the babies by touching them. The mother, smelling a strange smell on her babies, must have thought that the babies were strangers, and thus, killed them.

We must also ensure that there's sufficient food for the mother, because she needs lots of nutrients in order to feed her baby.

Dealing with death, albeit of small pet animals, was tough on DD. Initially she played the blame game. "Why did K Ita touch the babies?" "Why didn't you ask the shopkeeper earlier on how to care for the babies?" Then she started accusing me and DH, "You two must be happy because you didn't want them in the first place." Finally, she cried herself to sleep.

This morning, she and the maid held a funeral for the babies under our mango tree. The babies were buried next to DD's fallen teeth.

I hope the funeral will serve as a closure of sort for DD.

We'll be leaving for Hong Kong on Friday. Initially the maid was supposed to take the hamsters with her to my in-laws' house. But now we're not sure if that's a good idea because there're 2 cages, one of which will smell terribly because the maid can't clean it. And there are cats at my in-laws' house. We wouldn't want DD to lose any more of her hamsters.

Today I'll ask the pet shop if they would care for the hamsters during our holiday in Hong Kong. Hopefully they will.