CONTINUING with the nature theme, I thought you might like to hear what happened to a friend of mine this week.
Anne, who lives in Lepton, is the owner of Barry the hamster, or rather the mother of the owner of the aforementioned desert rat.
The family returned from their holidays and collected Barry from a friend’s house only to find that he too had been indulging himself.
Instead of his normal sleek golden figure, Barry had developed a round bulge in his abdomen and his usual good looks were marred by the fact that he looked like he had swallowed half a tennis ball.
Ann, who is a bit of an exercise fiend herself, decided that the portly Barry needed to get into shape. So she built an exercise area in the back garden, the walls of which were made up of husband Brian’s boots.
Hamsters being nocturnal, Anne waited until night before placing Barry inside the hamster exercise ball – a 7-inch red plastic sphere – and letting him loose inside his new training area. She then returned indoors for supper.
A cup of cocoa and bowl of cornflakes later, she went back outside in her pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers, to discover to her horror that Barry had charged at the boots and broken free. He and the wheel were nowhere to be seen.
In vain, Anne frantically searched the garden by torchlight. Still in her night clothes, she headed out into the road, which is on a steep hill.. She walked down the road a couple of hundred yards, but there was no sign of the rolling rodent in the torchlight.
Eventually, Anne got in the car and drove slowly down the road, headlights on full beam.
Finally she spotted something round and red at the bottom of the road, just before it meets Rowley Lane, and got out to investigate. Barry was alive!
He and the ball had finally come to rest in a sunken drain at the side of the tarmac. what a relief!
If they had got to the steep Rowley Lane, it would probably have been curtains for the intrepid explorer. Even if Barry could have survived the supersonic speeds the ball would have gathered on its way downhill, it’s unlikely he would have been able to dodge all the traffic on the busy Penistone Road.
STOP PRESS: Barry has gone missing in action.
A couple of days ago, he was let out in new fortified exercise pen without the hamster ball.
Making the most of his new-found freedom, he found an escape route and has not been seen since, despite the best efforts of a search party.
If any beady-eyed residents of Lepton spot a portly golden hamster with an adventurous glint in his eye, please get in touch.
