I don’t really have much to keep my occupied at Mum’s. It’s a beautiful house in a beautiful spot but it’s hot out there and I don’t really like leaving it. And there’s not much in the way of city or friends. So, the other night, I was scrolling through the amazing list of gadgets iGoogle has to offer when I came across Hampster.
It didn’t take long for me to delete most of the other gadgets I downloaded: the dysfunctional hangman game, the Mario game that doesn’t actually let you go anywhere beyond a few platforms, and the five or six penguins that waddle around aimlessly until you move your cursor into their little box, at which point they stop what they are doing and waddle-charge towards it. But I kept Hampster.
Hampster lives in a square box about the size of the weather or moon phase gadgets, and a little smaller than the horoscope gadget box. There is just enough room for him, a water dispenser and an exercise wheel.
Mostly, he’s on the wheel. Sometimes he runs facing left, but most of the time he faces right. (He’s on the right side of my iGoogle page, so maybe that looks like the clearest escape.) Occasionally, he’ll get off the wheel and go drink some water. If you click inside the box, a little poo-coloured food pellet falls from the tip of your cursor and he stops what he’s doing and goes and eats it. But you can only ever drop ten at a time. Got to be wary of overfeeding.
Sometimes, on the wheel, he stops running and lets it swing him back and forth to a stop. Sometimes he’ll climb off the wheel and just kind of stand there for a bit, staring at nothing with his little black pixel-cluster eyes. Sometimes he wanders over to the edge of his box and stares down at the corner. Looks over at his water bottle. Cleans his whiskers for a bit. Stares straight ahead.
Today I caught him standing on his hind legs, stretching himself all the way upwards and gazing at the moon phase gadget. I put my cursor into the box and he immediately started following it. I’m not sure if he did that in the beginning. Maybe he’s learned now that my cursor means little poo-coloured pellets. I moved my cursor around in small circles really fast. He followed and it looked like his head was about to snap off.
I can’t delete him. I can’t bring myself to do it. One day, maybe, I’ll open up my iGoogle page and the little box under the moon phases will be empty. Just a water dispenser and an exercise wheel but no Hamster in sight.
-Zoe Barron
Oneway 