Critter Tail
One hamster's narrow escape

IN THE POCKET- Henry the hamster is at home in Michael Diamond's shirt pocket. This photo was taken in 1956.

Some years ago, around 1956, I had a little white hamster named Henry. He was such a loving little pet and was very much at home in my shirt pocket.

One day after leaving the house, my family and I came home to find that Henry had somehow managed to get out of his cage and was nowhere to be found. Oh, how very upset we all were.

Our house had wall furnace vents about six inches above the floor that went straight down inside the walls about 10 feet. We could hear scratching and determined that it was coming from way down in one of the furnace vents in my bedroom. It must be our beloved Henry- but how to rescue him so far down?

At first we had the brilliant idea of using the vacuum hose to suck him up. Alas, the vacuum hose was not long enough. Then we found some cheesecloth and tied a long string to each corner like an upside down parachute, put hamster food on it and lowered it down to the bottom and then waited. When we lifted it up we knew that Henry or something else was on the cloth. We were all apprehensive as we pulled up the parachute, not knowing quite what to expect.

But when we got it to the top, there was our beloved Henry, covered in black soot but otherwise in good shape. After a few hours and lots of licking himself clean, he once again became our beautiful little pet.

Michael Diamond submitted this story.