Over a year ago, our twin daughters came to us and begged us to get them hamsters. I (wisely) refused, but my wife (unwisely) gave in, and within an hour we were driving home from the pet store with Smokey and Paco, two cute, adorable and totally unnecessary hamsters.

We'd had hamsters over the years, but not for very long. In the mid-Nineties, one got loose and chose to hide (unwisely, it turned out) under the rug in our front hallway. He couldn't have known, but it's a fairly well-traveled part of our house, and he lasted a very short time in his new lair before he was turned into a fur-covered pancake. We lost another two in the great massacre of 2002, when I (stupidly, it turned out) bought birdseed instead of hamster food. In my defense, it looked exactly the same, and I saved a buck at the pet store. It was weeks later, however, when we were digging tiny graves in the back yard, that I learned that the birdseed was coated with spicy chemicals that made it inedible to anything but birds. It was actually listed as a feature on the bag I (unwisely) didn't take the time to look at carefully.

As I thought it was unlikely we'd have Smokey or Paco for very long, I made sure that we bought the cheapest cages, wheels and water bottles we could. And even as my daughters settled their new pets into their new homes, I started a secret death pool in my own head.

Smokey, obviously the efficiency expert of the two, decided to curl up and die within two weeks of getting to our house. We held a small funeral in the little patch in the backyard where we always bury hamsters. I had the kids stand off at a safe distance while I dug the hole, as I was afraid I might accidentally unearth the bones of a former pet while trying to inter this one, something I'm sure would give my kids nightmares. My daughter stood stricken at the gravesite like Smokey was a small, hairy husband.

Suddenly, this no longer being a shared, fun experience, our other daughter lost interest in her hamster. It was hard for her to enjoy spending time with her hamster when Smokey's widow was across the hall giving her dirty looks. She asked that we move Paco's cage out of her room, because he 1) smelled, 2) kicked shavings all over her floor and 3) kept her up at night with his constant scratching and climbing.

Paco was, for a time, relegated to the guest bedroom where he couldn't bother anyone (except guests). I worried, however, that we might forget to feed him there, so we moved him to the first floor landing, where he's been ever since.

Given that no one in our family seemed to want a hamster anymore, we started asking around to see whether we could pawn Paco off on some unsuspecting neighbor child. Every neighbor child we asked agreed (eagerly) to take him on, but every parent of a neighbor child involved firmly (and in one case, almost rudely) vetoed the idea. This summer, I called the pet store where we'd gotten the hamster, and offered to drive him back and make a donation so that some other deserving child might be able to enjoy his company.

The manager of the Hamster Department explained that hamsters only live for two years at best. Paco, now 13 months old, was considered middle-aged by hamster standards, and he couldn't very well sell a soon-to-die hamster to an unsuspecting child, could he? I felt like telling him that he'd already done that to us with Smokey, who barely made it to our house before kicking the tiny bucket, but I let it go. I'm pretty sure that people who manage Hamster Departments don't have senses of humor when it comes to hamsters.

So Paco sits there on our landing, everybody's, and nobody's, hamster, curled up in a pile of Aspen shavings, kicking shavings and hamster poop out onto our landing. As we pass by, most of us say hi or wave to him, and sometimes he looks up, but everybody, including, I believe, Paco, knows that we're all marking our calendars.

Somewhere around mid-May next year, if you look in my backyard, you'll find my daughters in a little mini funeral procession, waiting impatiently as I nervously pace around, trying to find a spot where I can plant Paco without digging up poor ole Smokey.

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