man(ster) handling

Here comes my two year old, booking around the corner of my room, looking like an Olympic torch runner. Knees high, full speed ahead, terribly proud look in his eyes. Carrying something. Waving something around. So, I am thinking, "What the heck is that?! Did he just come from the bathroom? Outside in the mud? Oh boy, oh boy, do I want to know what that is?" I run over to him and there in his hand, sprawled out on his back with a terrified look on his face, is Hammy. Our sweet, quiet, NEW little brown and white hamster. Actually, it is my nine year old's hamster from his birthday last week. AHHH! I grab little hamster and begin checking for vital signs. Breathing, shaking, clawing. GOOD. This animal is alive. WHEW!
SO, let me pause for a moment and tell you about our little animal lover. Our two year old loves animals SO much. He picks up the bunnies at the farm by their ears, holds cats by the tail, manages to pet dogs, goats and horses the wrong way-you know where their hair is sticking up all crazy after and it just looks painful as he rubs backwards. All in the name of love. He thinks they are "brothers from another mother". He talks to them. Waits for answers.
THis is the child that single handedly...I mean single footedly...as a baby... kicked our new yellow Tweety to death while laying on his back. My poor little boys cried for days and gave a funeral. We have not had a pet since. Way too traumatic.
SO, we do not need anymore deaths in our family. I rescued Hammy from our man(ster) handling child and took him to the safety of his cage. A line from the Monsters Inc movie came into my mind. "Then it picked me up with it's mind powers and shook me like a dog!" Perfect. Meanwhile, little guy is behind me telling me all about what the two of them have been doing together. Quite an adventure. I see the little hamster ball there on the floor, open. Apparently, the hamster had a hard time getting into that ball. So my two year old says. I don't want to know. I have no idea how long they played. I just know that I had been listening to him chat for a while. I thought he was just talking to himself again. Nope.
I asked our nine year old to check Hammy for battle wounds when he got home from school.
Hammy is perched up on a bookshelf for now because his two year old (BFF) decided to get him out again (to feed him!) and we lost him. He was holed up in the bathroom thankfully. The look on the boys faces when they realized that Hammy was missing AND POSSIBLY DEAD was too painful for me to relive again. We have also had that experience before. Our little guys prayed for THAT hamster for days and left water bottles on the driveway for him. Unfortunately that story had a really traumatic ending that I cannot share here.
Maybe we should ALREADY be praying for this hamster.