Our hero is An Average Guy, just trying to make ends meet.
A while back his progeny decided that she wanted a hamster. Okay, she’s old enough to be responsible for a critter, even if it is basically vermin. So she received a hamster which she named Aiu and has been doing quite well with it.
Until now.
He’s in the kitchen making a ham sandwich and out of the corner of his eye sees something move. Now this is no small feat, given that he’s 53 and wears progressive lenses (okay dammit, they are bifocals). The daughter is in the kitchen with him, he says ‘Go check Aiu’s cage’ and about that time the shape looks back at him, no point in checking the cage because it’s definitely Aiu. At this point that critter better count herself lucky that Binky the Wonder Cat is temporarily residing elsewhere or we’d be finding her as a pellet in the litterbox.
They lock stares; his iffy worn out brown and her beady little black. She’s between the stacked washer/dryer and the chest freezer. He keeps eye contact, moves slowly toward the freezer, Aiu displays native intelligence and shoots back between the appliances. He stops, waits for a moment and it appears the native intelligence wore off because sure enough here she comes back toward him again. He says in a low voice ‘There she is’, the kid (still in the kitchen) squeals ‘Really?’ in that way only teenage girls can do and Aiu understandably disappears behind the freezer. He wishes he could too.
Score: hamster 1, human 0.
There’s an opening behind the freezer for access to a dark hole housing the compressor, a very logical place for something with the brain the size of a sweet pea to seek refuge within. Only the Great White Hamster Hunter (GWHH) can’t get to this portal to rodent heaven without dragging the 500 pound freezer out. Oh, fun.
So once the freezer is out, no hamster joy. Damn. That leaves only the stacked washer and dryer, it’s taller than he is and weighs about three times as much. That native intelligence is back, it’s by now pretty obvious that Aiu has squeezed under the HEAVIEST DAMN THING IN THE WHOLE HOUSE.
Score: hamster 2, GWHH 0.
Over his life as a guy, he has discovered that they do things in a certain order. They will approach a problem and first try something dumb to fix it. When that doesn’t work (but occasionally through blind luck it might, so it’s worth a try) they will then make use of a crude tool. When that doesn’t work, they wind up trying something way off the beaten path. Which either works, or it puts them under a doctors’ care for a while. Dumb comes first of course. He guesses he’ll be getting this hernia checked again real soon.
But we are also smarter than the animals. That’s why their heads hang on our walls and not the other way around.
So, using that logic: men are smarter than hamsters. Right?
But genetics demand that he adhere to the Guy Code. As noted earlier, that means he has to do something dumb as his first step in tackling whatever task is at hand (in this case hamster retrieval) or turn in the man card.
So of course the first thing he does is something dumb: he tries to move the stacked washer/dryer. It won’t budge; it might as well be welded to the floor.
Score: hamster 3, GWHH 0.
All the while the daughter is circling and asking a ton of questions. Grrr. Can’t she see the man vs. beast struggle going on here? Sheesh.
Next, the Guy Code demands after doing the dumb thing and failing, it’s time to ape our simian cousins and fashion a crude tool to try to complete the task at hand. Hey, he did not write the code but he must adhere to it.
He tires of the questions and wants to put a quick end to this whole thing because his beer’s getting warm. Plus the incessant questions are really grating on the only nerve he has left. Since he’s already done the dumb thing it’s time to do that whole crude tool thing. So he sends daughter off on an errand; find a shrubbery, er, yardstick while he watches and waits for the ferocious hamster creature to spring, saliva covered fangs dripping.
Before the beast has a chance to rip his throat out, daughter comes racing back with a 12” ruler. What, does this look like a Barbie washer/dryer? If ya want something done right… he puts her on hamster watch duty and goes hunting yardsticks. He finds one and comes back to rejoin the chase.
He instructs the daughter to sit on top of the freezer and lays down on his belly, then begins sliding the yardstick under the washing machine. It gets about halfway then stops. He moves the yardstick over a foot or so, it gets stuck again. It finally becomes obvious to him that some shortsighted engineer at the washing machine plant has never thought someone might have to get a hamster out from under one of his machines and has thus put a brace of some kind right in the way of the crude tool. Thanks, unknown engineer dude.
Score: hamster 4, unknown engineer dude 1, GWHH 0.
So he has an epiphany; maybe sound will do it! (An occasional epiphany is allowed under the Guy Code, BTW.) So he starts banging the brace with the yardstick, sure enough Aiu comes racing out from under the machine and the daughter squeals ‘I got her!’ Uh, no she doesn’t. Some quirk of genetics has given her arms that are shorter than the freezer is tall, thus she comes up about 8” short. Why oh why didn’t he marry a basketball player? That way the progeny would have arms suitably long enough to quickly snare the errant beast. Aiu goes racing back under the washer again, we are back to Square 1.
Score: hamster 5, unknown engineer 1, Great White Hamster Hunter 0.
The GWHH sits there, feeling defeated and crushed. It’s become obvious to him that tiny creature with a sunflower seed sized ball of nerves for a CPU has gotten the best of the pinnacle of bipedal mammalian evolution. Dumb thing, crude tool and epiphany haven’t worked so far.
The Guy Code demands that after the dumb thing, the crude tool and the epiphany have failed it’s time to think way outside the box. This is the kind of thinking which, in the past, has led to great achievements such as getting back from the far side of the moon in a crippled spaceship but also to things like .22 shells being used to replace fuses. So it is to be feared as well as applauded.
Here he sits like Rodin’s most famous work. The beer’s getting warmer by the second and the rancid stink of defeat hangs in the air. (Or is that last night’s burrito…?) But then, there’s a spark of an idea… he puts the daughter back on hamster escape watch for a few minutes while he gathers his weaponry.
Out to the garage goes the GWHH. He flips on the air compressor, plugs in the air hose then watches the pressure build to the 125 PSI max, snickering evilly all the while. The compressor reaches max pressure and cycles off. He finds the blow gun and plugs it in, test fires it and nods. Now his weapon is complete.
He drags the air hose into the laundry room, the daughter says the fierce beast has shown its nose once and she is wondering if we can ever sleep soundly again with such a ferocious animal loose in the domicile. He waves the blow gun at her and snickers, she gets a questioning (or is it frightened?) look on her face.
He positions the daughter so she can reach the floor behind the freezer, then assumes the earlier ‘yardstick’ position. He aims the blow gun at the gap between the washer and the floor, say ‘ready?’ and the daughter confirms that she is.
A 125PSI blast of compressed air explodes under the washing machine. Dust bunnies spray out from under the machine and up the wall, then drift down, writhing slowly in their death throes. But no hamster. Tough guy, er, girl, eh? Heh. Got something for tough guys, er, girls.
He slides the nozzle back into the gap under the machine and looses a long burst which would have emptied a Thompson submachine gun drum. More dust bunnies die ‘OMG DAD THERE SHE IS!’ the daughter makes a grab-
And misses. It’s that whole anatomical quirk thing again.
He leaps up (well, the 53 year old version of leap up, anyway) and she yells ‘she’s on the side next to the garage door!’ which is open maybe ¾” because of the air hose. Uh oh. Can’t let this ravenous seed gobbling poop pellet producing beast loose on an unsuspecting neighborhood; oh the humanity!
So he quickly positions himself at the junction of freezer, wall and door, then looks in the gap between the freezer and the wall. Aiu stares back at him with obvious fury (and maybe a little fear) in those beady eyes.
Heh.
Maybe she is beginning to understand that native intelligence is no match for a redneck armed with an air compressor and a blow gun, huh? He tries to grab for her but his arm’s too big for the gap.
She makes a break for the kitchen, but he is too quick; he grabs her just as she’s trying to go back to the relative safety of the washing machine. HE IS VICTORIOUS! Back in your cage, vermin!
Final score: Hamster 5, unknown engineer 1, GWHH 1 BUT: his single point is the one that counted.
Good hunting!
