The newest Clark...

About a month ago a new Clark joined the household and I have to admit he is the most maintenance free one in the bunch. For the longest time Morgan has said she wanted a hamster. I'm not entirely sure where the idea came from, because to my knowledge she hasn't known anyone that had one and they didn't have one at school. So my best guess is that she saw them at the pet store and got it stuck in her head that it would be a fun thing to have.

Now when I say the "longest time" I mean over a year....at least! So I guess I wasn't too surprised by our latest addition. Morgan and Greg went to the pet store to get food for the dogs, and while they were gone I got a phone call. It was Greg saying that Morgan was begging for a hamster. Apparently she got to his heartstrings, because about 20 minutes later they walked in the house with this.....

Of course I immediately knew what was in that little white box, because I had this little face smiling at me.....

Morgan was so excited to show me what was in the box....so we carefully opened the lid and inside this is what we found!

A tiny dwarf hamster was huddling in the corner of the box. I think he was a little afraid of the shrieking and screaming that was coming from Morgan and Elizabeth. While they were at the pet store they picked up a cage for him, some pine shavings for his bed, food etc. So Morgan patiently waited for Greg to construct the cage so we could get her new hamster out.

Finally it was done, and we were able to introduce the hamster to his new home. For awhile Morgan just sat there and watched him investigate his new digs.

Now in case you didn't notice in that picture above, there was another member of the Clark family that was interested in the new addition......

That's right, DeWalt was very interested in this new creature, but more about that later.

In order for you to get a sense of how excited she was I grabbed this little video.

Now it wasn't too long after this video was taken that Morgan decided that instead of calling him "Rhino" (which was inspired by the hamster in the movie Bolt) that she would rather name him "Rainbow". So the hamster will forever be known as Rainbow Clark.

Now onto Rainbow's adventures......

Probably about a week and a half after we got Rainbow set up in Morgan's room (he lives in his cage which is on Morgan's bookshelf) Greg came across a near catastrophe. Now before I tell the whole story, think back to that picture of DeWalt introducing himself to Rainbow. Well every since that moment DeWalt has been sticking pretty close to Rainbow. He sleeps that the foot of Morgan's bed so he can watch the cage, he pretty much lives in Morgan's room now. So one Morgan after we had all gone, Greg walked into Morgan's room and saw that DeWalt had someone popped off one of the tubes to Rainbow's cage. Right as he walked in he saw Rainbow poke his little head out of the tube....I'm sure you can guess who was patiently waiting for this to happen....DeWalt! As soon as Rainbow popped his little head out, DeWalt hit him and knocked him out of the tunnel. Greg quickly threw something to scare DeWalt and grabbed Rainbow and put him back in his cage. It was a near catastrophe.

Since then DeWalt climbs on the bookshelf, lays on the floor beneath it and sleeps at the end of Morgan's bed all in hopes that he will have another chance at Rainbow.

Since Rainbow made it through his near death experience about a week or so later I decided he needed a new toy. So I got him a ball. Every hamster needs a ball, right? Morgan was pretty excited to see him in there, so when Greg was cleaning out his cage, Morgan brought him downstairs in the ball and we watched him move around. It was pretty funny, and the girls quickly lost interest but what was even better was when Belle got a chance to come face to face with Rainbow.




I think she was scared. Rainbow had to go back to his cage, mainly because Morgan kept forgetting that he was in the ball and would walk off and leave him. So for now his exercise consists of nightly running on his wheel. That little guy is loud!

So surprisingly Rainbow has been with us for over a month and the girls are still interested in him. For all those visiting over the holidays we hope you can meet Rainbow in person.