Cry of the Werehamster: The First Part

For Anne

It was a warm fall afternoon, and Frank the gray squirrel and his pals had already spent a busy and productive day burying nuts in the loamy-smelling yard and tormenting the overweight cats that sat in windows watching them. The squirrels were taking their union-mandated fifteen minute break, and where on another day they would be merry and frolicsome and playfully chasing each other around the elm tree, today they just stood around in a small group and jinked their tails at one another.

"Hey, Frank, did you see the cat in the yellow house on the corner? I had him hopping up and down and foaming at the mouth the whole time I was cleaning out the bird feeder right across from his window," chortled Seamus, the squirrel who lived two trees down from Frank.

"Go on, Seamus, that fat old cat was asleep in the sunshine the whole time and you know it. You couldn't get a vretch excited if you spent the day at it," retorted Frank, referring to a small creature that squirrels know about that is often quite excitable. "Dang, this bite I got last month from some creature of the night that I was unable to see clearly is really itching a lot today."

"You should have that looked at," said Al, an older gray squirrel from down the street. "Hey, check out that squirrel, will you? He must have seen Pirates of the Caribbean one too many times or something! Arrrgh!" He and the other squirrels then made a lot more "Arrgh!" sounds and chittered amongst themselves and twitched their tails derisively at the squirrel walking past them in the yard.

The old red squirrel they were mocking had a scarf tied around his head and a large gold hoop in his left ear. One of his eyes was missing and he was hobbling along painfully until he came abreast of Frank and the other squirrels. But as he glanced with his good eye at Frank, he yikked and leapt backward and hawked a gobbet of phlegm onto Frank's forehead.

"Oi! What the fuck did you do that for, you asshole?" snarled Frank.

The old red squirrel didn't reply, but instead raised a quivering paw and pointed it at Frank and recited in a querulous voice:

Not all round and hard things are walnuts
Not every small brown thing's a seed
Take care on the night of the full moon
Lest the werehamster's bite makes you bleed
A lot from a ripped throat

Frank and his friends looked at one another in puzzlement.

"Arrgh, it sounds lots better in the original Gypsy Squirrel dialect, I had to translate it myself on the spot and I'm frankly a little rusty but I'm pretty sure you couldn't do a better job of it, you cackling jackanapes," muttered the old squirrel. "But what it means is that you've been bitten by a werehamster and tonight's a full moon. You'll go through a painful and dramatic transformation into a loathsome monster then you'll kill and eat the one you love most. Arrgh, there I go giving away the plot again," grumbled the colorful stock character as he limped away. "'Sound ominous,' they tell me. 'Sound mysterious and portentous,' they say. But then they only give me a paragraph or two and spend half the time talking about how bizarre I look, what the hell am I supposed to do, it's not like this is a high-budget blog and I can actually get a chance to do the scene right or anything...."

Frank and the other squirrels looked at each other and shrugged, then Al said,

"Hey Frank, tonight's your big date with Doris, isn't it? I can't believe you got her to go out with you. What do you have planned tonight, scamper behind the garage and have at her for twenty seconds then run off? That didn't work out so well with Amber, did it?" At this Al and the other squirrels dissolved into the squirrel equivalent of peals of laughter.

"Give me a break, guys, she's a nice squirrel -- I have to get her drunk first," replied Frank good-naturedly. "We're going down the block where I have some fermented apples stashed and I'm going to dig up a couple of juicy nuts I've been saving and we're going to make a night of it. In fact," said Frank, lowering his voice conspiratorially, "I might even propose to her if I can work up the courage!"

"Gerroff!" said Seamus. "You old dog you! I never had you pegged for the marrying type!"

"Yeah, this time I'm serious about entering into a mature and nurturing and mutually respectful relationship and I'm going to make it work. I've decided that I'm tired of one-minute stands with any squirrel that has ten nipples -- this time it's love."

"Squirrel love," snickered Al. "It's like muskrat love except smaller and dryer!" And the three squirrels kittered and twitched their tails and went back to work. But if one were to look carefully at young Frank one could detect a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes as he scurried about the yard gathering food....

[Look for "Cry Of The Werehamster: The Next Part" coming soon to a blog near you. -- The Management]

-- Hulles

The Littlest Werehamster

As you might guess from the title, I had originally intended this to be a heartwarming and inspirational seasonal tale but faeries switched it with another story at birth and ate the original. -- The Management

[for Heather]

Jimmy looked like a normal squirrel. He scampered through people's yards in the neighborhood with the other squirrels, he ate lots of seeds out of bird feeders, and he tormented cats sitting in windows by frolicking in their yards right under their uppity cat noses. But Jimmy had a secret: every month, on nights of the full moon, he turned from a squirrel into a werehamster.

Werehamsters, if you have not encountered them before, closely resemble normal hamsters except they have inch-long fangs, often speak in Eastern European accents, and have an insatiable craving for the flesh of small mammals, usually pets. However, due to an unfortunate incident involving hamsterbane and a clever gypsy, Jimmy ended up stunted, twisted and frankly pretty small whenever he underwent the dramatic and painful metamorphosis into his werehamster form (as depicted in many movies). This made Jimmy depressed and adversely affected his social life.

Every evening during the full moon, all the other neighborhood werehamsters would gather together and plan gruesome and gory deeds. They often chose to work together as a pack because it was very difficult for a lone werehamster to bring down a German Shepherd all by himself. As a result, the little monsters would often meet underneath a piece of plywood behind the garage of the house on the corner to brag about their prowess at throat ripping and plan their evening's carnage as a group. Jimmy always tried to show up for these meetings because he desperately wanted to be a really bad werehamster just like the others, but to no avail – Jimmy was the littlest werehamster, and had lots of trouble with the whole werehamster gig of eating pets and other small animals. The other werehamsters wanted nothing to do with him, and often told him to show up at the wrong garage, or said that the meeting was at 10PM when it was really at 8PM. This made Jimmy sad, so many nights Jimmy had to try to savage the local wildlife all by himself.

Jimmy would creep along by the light of the gibbous moon and attempt to hamstring a tomcat, but he always seemed to miss and grab a mouthful of fur instead. He would lurk in the shadows as a rabbit ran by on its way to the garden and then jump out to lock his teeth on the bunny's throat, but Jimmy would always snap his pointly little fangs on air instead of on rabbit. No matter who he seemed to hunt, invariably his prey would outwit, outrun or just plain ignore Jimmy as he gave his fierce growl and sprang. Poor little Jimmy would always end up on his little werehamster butt and the prey would always run off giggling. (Jimmy's fierce growl sounded much like an indignant cricket to many of his would-be meals, which briefly confused them but certainly did not paralyze them with fear as Jimmy intended.)

Because of this lack of hunting ability the other werehamsters teased Jimmy unmercifully. “You should be a normal hamster and a weresquirrel,” they would say mockingly. “That way you could viciously attack acorns and walnuts. Maybe then you'd get yourself a victim or two. Nuts don't run very fast.” Then they would all fall down laughing at how clever they were and at how much Jimmy sucked.

Eventually, Jimmy tired of this teasing and quit even trying to attend the Werehamster Carnage Society meetings. Instead of attacking chihuahuas and the occasional scrawny alley cat, Jimmy would hunker down underneath an azalea bush with a Slim Jim and mutter to himself. “I'll show those guys,” he'd say. “Someday they'll regret fucking with little Jimmy.”

Sadly, in this he was mistaken. Eventually Jimmy was killed with a silver BB, fired from a Daisy air rifle by a neighborhood kid who was actually aiming at the basement window of the house next door. So the other werehamsters never once regretted fucking with little Jimmy, and in fact told Jimmy stories for many months after his demise.

Even today, if you hide near the plywood behind the garage on the corner during the full moon, you can still hear the other werehamsters laughing uproariously at how much Jimmy sucked. But be careful not to snicker out loud at the stories because, unlike little Jimmy, an enraged herd of bull werehamsters is not something to fuck with. If they hear you, they'll be on you like land piranhas and all anyone will ever find of you is your belt buckle. Some of the “little Jimmy” stories are worth the risk though, especially the way the other werehamsters tell them, so maybe you'll decide to take your chances on a remarkably grisly death and try to hear them anyway. Just remember to bring along a clean gym sock to stuff in your mouth during the punch lines and you'll probably be fine.

-- Hulles