Pariah Burke Consulting & Training with Creative & Publishing Workflow Expert Pariah S. Burke | Informing & Empowering Creative Professionals™

Lately, I’ve been work­ing late into the night for two rea­sons: First, I’m doing a lot of server work, which is bet­ter done dur­ing peri­ods of least activ­ity (Midnight to 4 am Pacific Time). Second, I’m work­ing on an instruc­tional DVD for VTC. With the kids still on sum­mer vaca­tion, the mid­dle of the night is the only time I can get a fully quiet house to record.

I’ve been work­ing on WordPress tem­plates and con­tent man­age­ment restruc­tur­ing for David Blatner’s and Anne-Marie Concepcion’s InDesignSecrets​.com. I got up Wednesday morn­ing expect­ing to fin­ish my report on the repro­gram­ming and lay­out revi­sions, and to deliver the new site to them. Later in the day, I was going to fin­ish off the Quark VS InDesign​.com rebrand and put in some work on my new InDesign book.

The day didn’t go as I had planned.

Late Wednesday morn­ing, as I began to check my e-mail and sip my first gal­lon of cof­fee, my 10 and 8 year-old step-daughters (psue­donony­mously, Mojo JoJo and Sassy, respec­tively) informed that Sassy’s favorite ham­ster, Muisa, wasn’t act­ing nor­mally. Sure enough, the extremely affec­tion­ate and fairly active Musa was list­less, inat­ten­tive, and breath­ing too quickly.

Tinker, another ham­ster whom the girls had res­cued last year from a class­mate with a long list of dead pets, had also devel­oped a lesion on her cheek.

We were all dressed and at the vet’s office within the hour.

Between the two ham­sters, there were exams, out-patient surgery, fecal smear analy­ses, sub­cu­ta­neous fluid injec­tions, lots of pre­scribed med­ica­tion, and three hours.

Tinker was doing fine when we got home. The surgery hadn’t even sapped her energy–she was run­ning about just fine.

Muisa, how­ever, sick with some kind of bug that ren­dered her severely dehy­drated in under 24 hours, couldn’t hold up her own head, though she kept try­ing to run (her favorite activ­ity). While I dis­as­sem­bled, scrubbed, ster­il­ized, and reassem­bled her man­sion of a habi­tat, Sassy com­forted her ham­ster with con­ver­sa­tion and singing.

By 6 o’clock, Muisa was rest­ing in a fresh habi­tat, bur­rowed into the soft cot­ton bed­ding, Tinker was fed and rest­ing, and I was com­pletely exhausted. I crashed.

Strawberry Blonde woke me around nine. Muisa had died.

Over the last 18 months, we’ve had five ham­sters. Muisa was half of the first pair. Her sis­ter had run away to set her­self up as queen of the back­yard field mice pop­u­la­tion. For a while, Muisa went with her, but returned later, never to attempt escape again. The next two ham­sters were replace­ments for the run­aways (one has since passed away). Tinker was a refugee.

Muisa was the most unique, most affec­tion­ate of them all. Most ham­sters run in wheels as fast as their lit­tle legs will carry them; Muisa always kept her own pace. Her many other unique qual­i­ties really enam­ored her to Strawberry Blonde, Mojo JoJo, and, espe­cially, my 8-year-old, Sassy. The 19-month-old Muisa was Sassy’s best friend. Strawberry Blonde also loved the ani­mal dearly, find­ing with her a con­nec­tion and com­fort that none of the other ham­sters had bestowed.

When the lit­tle ham­ster passed, the girls were at their father’s house for the night. We called and gave him a headsup, but asked that he not break the news. Better to let them enjoy their night. Dad and I will inform them when he brings them home tomor­row morning.

I cared for Muisa, too, but I have to be the strong one. My con­cern lay mostly with the pain my fam­ily endures over the event. I’m the one who took care of the final arrange­ments, so to speak, and who will dig the hole tomor­row and pre­side over the funeral my will kids need held. Comforting Strawberry Blonde over the loss broke my heart. It’ll break all over again when I have to tell Sassy in the morn­ing. Nothing can rend a man’s heart like telling a lit­tle girl that her best friend died.

For now… I’ve (obvi­ously) got­ten back in front of the com­puter for the first time the girls came into my office with wor­ried faces. I’m wrap­ping up my report on the InDesignSecrets​.com work, but my con­cen­tra­tion is shot. Thankfully it’s just a mat­ter of explain­ing what I did, not actu­ally find­ing solu­tions to design or PHP problems.

Tomorrow I’ll try to work, but my house­hold will be in a state of mourn­ing. Tinker may yet pass, too, leav­ing only a sin­gle, stand­off­ish ham­ster remain­ing. Whether or not Tinker sur­vives what may have been a can­cer­ous lesion, the weight of Muisa’s death will keep the girls tear­ful and con­flicted most of the day. They’ll waf­fle all day between want­ing and not want­ing another ham­ster. Strawberry Blonde will ache for them from her office out of the house, while I com­fort them from my office in the house. My work will wait.