Wonderful Creation

I was at the Pacific Mansion lobby and about to take the lift when I noticed two cages of hamsters at a corner. Thinking that someone had left the cages there and would come back for them, I took the lift and showed my client's unit for rental. After the showing, I noticed that the cages were no longer there, yet I felt compelled to ask the cleaner if someone had taken them. "No, thrown away! Rubbish dump!" All my adrenalin surfaced, and I requested that the cages be given to me, so that I could find a home for the hamsters. One of the cleaners smiled widely, relieved that I was going to take away the cages rather than let the poor creatures be cruelly killed in the incinerator!

I advertised for pet lovers to adopt the hamsters. The best place would be the notice board at Cold Storage, Centre Point. Three days later, and I still had not received a single call. Getting worried, I decided to approach a pet-shop to see whether they would adopt the hamsters.

On the fourth day, to my relief, a young student, Jay, phoned and adopted one pair which appeared to be the parents of the babies in the other cage. A mother with two young daughters adopted the other cage of 6 hamsters. I was relieved that Jay, despite his youth, is an expert on hamsters. He also keeps rabbits and gold fish. An obvious animal lover! Shortly after, Jay wrote to me that eight baby hamsters had been born. I wanted to go immediately to see the baby hamsters, but doting and knowledgeable as Jay was, he explained that the babies could not be removed yet, as they still needed to suckle their mother's milk. The mother hamster would eat up her babies if she thinks that she and her babies' lives are threatened, or if she reproduces so fast and feels she cannot provide enough milk for her babies.

When the babies could be viewed, the timing coincided with the lunar new year. What an auspicious time! When I visited Jay, I was most delighted that the mother hamster just had another bumper of newly born babies! Wow! Our Senior Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, would be delighted if our population could grow at this rate! Jay is a generous boy. When my friends wanted to adopt some hamsters, he readily agreed to give them four of the babies.

There were four dainty hamsters running happily in the cage. Their colour was a soothing beige and Jay told me that the other four babies could have been eaten by their mother. Jay pulled aside the cloth covering the cage and fleetingly showed me the mother with her batch of eight newborn babies. Amazing. They were so tiny ... about two and a half cm and their bodies were almost transparent and hairless. Jay explained that at this stage, the mother hamster was highly sensitive and nervous and that was why he draped a cloth over the cage to give the hamsters more cosiness and privacy.

After conception, hamsters are born after about fifteen days! Wouldn't it be nice if this could apply to humans too? Then mothers would not be heavily laden with child for nine full months before the child sees the world! But I guess, because man is God's highest form of creation, he has to be carefully and painstakingly made.

Jay's parents were very hospitable and it was indeed a great visit. Jay's mother told me that they would usually do their shopping in their heartland mall, but during the Christmas period, they decided to shop at Orchard Road. That was how Jay noticed my advertisement.

Truly, if something is meant to be yours, it is yours. I went away, having learnt a lot about hamsters from a young student.

Emerson had so rightly said, "Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that I learn of him."

Gan Chau