The Great Hamster Escape

When hamsters came into my house years ago they had little plastic balls, so they could run merrily all over the house. (Humans now have those, too. You'd think we could just walk.) We did have to close the door to the basement while they were out. I thought it would be kind of funny to hear the “thump-thump” of a rodent taking a ride, but the kids thought the hamster wouldn’t appreciate an E-ticket at Disneyland.

One day I found one of the balls in the kitchen, sans hamster. The lid had popped off. This triggered a panicked search, which was about as successful as panicked searches usually are. The hamster – Ranger, named after a slippery, hard to track character from a Stephanie Plum novel – was gone.

My daughters were very upset. I looked at it as a challenge ... but before you congratulate me for my attitude, I should point out that I hate challenges.

After a time – a long time, during which I could have been doing more important things, like nothing – I found a little white puff ball behind the oven, as far back into the corner as he could possibly get. I could have done a few different things, but I didn’t have a gun on me, and in my experience napalm is dangerously unreliable. So instead, I tried to entice the furball out with a handful of his favorite snack, which looks suspiciously like shreds of colored paper.

Ranger instantly disappeared into the wall.

He’d discovered what I, in ten years, had not – the hole mice use to get into my house every fall. (They stopped coming after we got the pet snake, but that's another story.) It led behind the cupboard and from there to – who knows? A rodent superhighway, perhaps, or a mouseport, or a hamsterteria.

The next morning, I found a very old mouse carcass on the floor outside the hole. I’m talking mummified. Ranger had not only made himself at home in the former mouse house, he’d even dug up the cemetery.

"Yeah, I'm bad, I'm bad--you know it."

 

Now what? Offering amnesty wasn’t likely to help. There is a homemade trap you can build, making steps out of books that lead to a trash can. Water and food goes into the can, and once inside, the sides are too steep for the hamster to get out again. The problem is, Ranger is afraid of heights. Seriously. It took him a week to climb down out of the upstairs apartment in the hamster house.

I considered leaving him in that hole, until the squeaking started.

The only time they made noise was when they started fighting each other. Every now and then they’d get into a quarrel over who gets the best piece of trail mix, or who controls the remote. Then they’d squeak like crazy until they were all squeaked out, and ten minutes later they’d be happily sitting together again. And yes, it reminded me of my daughters.

The conclusion was inescapable: Ranger wasn’t alone down there. Hopefully we weren't hearing loud rodent sex.

"You should have sent me in, coach--I'd have those rodents for breakfast. Literally."

 

A few days later we found the little white furball, huddled behind a bookcase that turned out to be an excellent place to trap him. I was never so happy to be a book packrat. Or is that a bookrat? Ranger was none too happy, and who can blame him? He’d had free run of the house, so it was like moving out of the Taj Mahal and into a one room trailer. He was in a foul mood, and proved it with a couple of knock down – drag outs with his old roommate.

I never found out whether his mouse friend kicked him out, but later that day I saw the mouse trying to fit an entire soda cracker through its doorway. Eating for two? How friendly they were, I don’t know – can hamsters and mice cross breed? Was I in danger of being overrun by white mice, bent on freeing their dad? I’ve had a few disturbing nightmares.

All I know is, after his brief escape Ranger was awfully squirrely– if you’ll pardon my rodent-themed pun. I feel like I’ve separated Rangero and Julie-rat.

 

 

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https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
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Speak of the Devil: The Passing Of The Monarch

Speak of the Devil: The Passing Of The Monarch:  Queen Elizabeth II The world is a darker place with her passing. This portrait of the Queen dates to 2012, and hangs at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

I Wish You Knew What It's Like ....

 

I wish I'd written this but, sadly, I don't know the author. What I do know is that the author must be an emergency responder. (I first found it in 2006, so if some parts seem a little outdated, that's why.)



I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom for
trapped children at 3 AM, flames rolling above your head, your palms and
knees burning as you crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the
kitchen below you burns.

I wish you could comprehend a wife's horror at 6 in the morning as I check her husband of 40 years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back, knowing intuitively it is too late. But wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done to try to save his life.

I wish you knew the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste of
soot-filled mucus, the feeling of intense heat through your turnout
gear, the sound of flames crackling, the eeriness of being able to see
absolutely nothing in dense smoke-sensations that I've become too
familiar with.

I wish you could read my mind as I respond to a building fire "Is
this a false alarm or a working fire? How is the building constructed? What
hazards await me? Is anyone trapped?" Or to call, "What is wrong with the
patient? Is it minor or life-threatening? Is the caller really in distress or
is he waiting for us with a 2x4 or a gun?"

 I wish you could be in the emergency room as a doctor pronounces dead
The beautiful five-year old girl that I have been trying to save during the past 25 minutes. Who will never go on her first date or say the words, "I love you Mommy" again.

I wish you could know the frustration I feel in the cab of the
engine, squad, or my personal vehicle, the driver with his foot pressing down
hard on the pedal, my arm tugging again and again at the air horn chain, as
you fail to yield the right-of-way at an intersection or in traffic. When you
need us however, your first comment upon our arrival will be, "It took
you forever to get here!"

I wish you could know my thoughts as I help extricate a girl of
teenage years from the remains of her automobile. "What if this was my
daughter, sister, my girlfriend or a friend? What were her parents
reaction going to be when they opened the door to find a police officer with hat in hand?"

I wish you could know how it feels to walk in the back door and greet
my parents and family, not having the heart to tell them that I nearly
did not come back from the last call.

I wish you could know how it feels dispatching officers, firefighters
and EMT's out and when we call for them our heart drops because no
one answers back, or to here a bone chilling 911 call of a child or wife
needing assistance.

I wish you could feel the hurt as people verbally, and sometimes
physically, abuse us or belittle what I do, or as they express their
attitudes of "It will never happen to me."

I wish you could realize the physical, emotional and mental drain or
missed meals, lost sleep and forgone social activities, in addition to
all the tragedy my eyes have seen.

I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of
helping save a life or preserving someone's property, or being able to be there
in time of crisis, or creating order from total chaos.

I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little boy
tugging at your arm and asking, "Is Mommy okay?" Not even being able to
look in his eyes without tears from your own and not knowing what to say. Or
to have to hold back a long time friend who watches his buddy having CPR
done on him as they take him away in the Medic Unit. You know all along he did not have his seat belt on. A sensation that I have become too familiar with.

Unless you have lived with this kind of life, you will never truly
understand or appreciate who I am, we are, or what our job really means
to us...I wish you could though.
 

Appreciate and support the local EMS workers, 911 dispatchers, firefighters, and law enforcement officers in your area.

One day that might save your property or your life. When you see them coming with lights flashing, move out of the way quickly, then pray for them.

 

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Epic link fail

Okay, so, I'm on several social media sites, and I've been cross-posting by copying my original blog on Blogger, then pasting that onto places such as LiveJournal and others. I've just found out that when I do that, all the links to our books, the newsletter, our website, everything, changed into links that went right back to the blog.

For who knows how long. Which means either no one has been clicking on the links, or no one thought to tell me they were wrong. Either possibility makes me sad.

I might not have time or energy to see how far back this goes, but rest assured I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Meanwhile links on Blogger work fine, such as on this one about the Michigan magazine's profile of me:

https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/2022/09/michigan-features-me-well-michigan.html

But when I pasted that link onto, say, LiveJournal, all the links go back to the Blogger post, instead of where they say they go. I might be able to copy from LJ TO Blogger, instead of the other way around.

It's going to take some time and Tylenol to figure it all out, but rest assured, I'm going to be more careful in the future. Also, these are the CORRECT links to our website, Barnes and Noble author's page, and Amazon author's page:

http://markrhunter.com/

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

And to the newsletters are all here:

https://us10.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=02054e9863d409b2281390e3b&id=f39dd965f0

Michigan Features: Me. Well, a Michigan Website Does

(You can read the original version of this--and see a cute picture of our dog--over at the newsletter:   https://mailchi.mp/1de8decbbe08/ive-become-an-interstate-sensation.)

 

I was featured in VoyageMichigan!

No, seriously. I can prove it:

https://voyagemichigan.com/interview/life-work-with-mark-hunter-of-just-south-of-the-michigan-state-line-in-indiana/

I know what you're thinking: "But Mark, aren't you a Hoosier boy?" Well, yeah, but I can start driving right now and be in Michigan in half an hour, assuming the highway is open in Rome City. As I explain in the article, Michigan has been very good to me, and I've been to several of its most famous places: Hell; Albion; Detroit; and this place:

This is Lake Bellaire, where my ex-father-in-law owns a cottage that, thank goodness, we still get to visit now and then. It's also the setting for my novel Radio Red, which was researched, outlined, and partially written up there. The book is what got the attention of the VoyageMichigan crew, who were kind enough to do the aforementioned profile. So yes, Michigan is my second favorite state, although I must admit in all fairness that I've never been to Rhode Island.

Check out the article and the rest of the website! Then check out the book, which you can find on our website, or here:

https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Red-Mark-R-Hunter-ebook/dp/B01MRZ52DM

Check it out: I guarantee you won't be disappointed.*

*Guarantees do not constitute a guarantee except within 500 feet of the Devil's Soup Bowl or in Hell (when frozen over).

 

Find all our books here:

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

New CPR Device Aimed At Improving Survival Rates

 Albion (Indiana) firefighters are testing a new device designed to assist them in performing life-saving CPR.

 

The Stryker CPR device is battery powered, and is designed to give high quality CPR with minimal interruptions--a major link in the chain of survival for the patient. Albion firefighters trained in using the device when it was delivered, and will be evaluating its usefulness in a three month trial.

In response to medical research, modern CPR is given at a much faster rate than when first developed, and as a result people giving it tend to get fatigued quickly. Since volunteer fire departments are increasingly having difficulty attracting members, there's a danger that not enough responders will be available when patients go into cardiac arrest.

 The device helps those problems by giving constant, high-quality CPR while firefighters and medics concentrate on other life-saving tasks on the scene. The device will be kept on the AFD's First Responder unit, ready for use at a moment's notice.

The AFD worked directly with Stryker and its local representative, Meagan Beveridge, in obtaining the device.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

A Hairy Situation Added Color to Our Lives

My youngest daughter wanted to color her hair. Brown. Remember brown, it becomes important later. My oldest daughter volunteered to do the coloring. She’s good at that kind of thing. (At least she was then--this all happened years ago.) I couldn’t identify where that feeling of impending doom came from, so I kept my mouth shut.

Big mistake.  

We picked up a box of coloring from a big honkin’ market, which I’ll call BHM (for Big Honkin’ Market). It had a beautiful woman on the front. (The coloring box, not the BHM.) Things were looking up.

That's Charis on the left and Jill on the right, at about the same time. No, I'm not pulling them apart--they really did get along, usually.

It didn’t start out badly. Nothing was thrown, no pinching, I didn’t have to guard the knife drawer. Charis did her job to perfection, her timing impeccable, and soon she freed her sister’s hair from the confines of plastic and foil –

And the room lit up, as if a natural gas explosion had engulfed the kitchen. Believe me, I know what those look like.

 

I know a little about propane explosions, too.

Remember, they were using brown coloring. The problem was, Jillian’s hair was now orange. Bright orange. Florescent orange. State highway worker vest orange. People from two blocks away called 911 to say my house was on fire. People two miles away reported UFO sightings. On the other side of the country, the psychic who inspired the TV show “Medium” woke up screaming.

Charis sucked in her breath so hard her face actually disappeared into the back of her head.

Jill headed for the bathroom to look in the mirror, then stumbled out again, temporarily blinded. She saw spots in front of her eyes for two days.

After several minutes of wailing and gnashing of teeth, we took stock of the situation and did the only logical thing: called their mother, who used to be a professional hairstylist. She lived twelve miles away, but already knew – she’d seen the reflection of my daughter’s hair in low hanging clouds. She informed us that we needed to bring a stripper home.

A stripper? All right! Things were really looking up.

But she meant a product that strips color out of hair, which made a heck of a lot more sense. We would strip the orange out, possibly with the use of a nuclear accelerator, then put a different color in.

So back we went to BHM, for more coloring. There Charis discovered a box of the same stuff we’d used had been opened on the shelf. She looked into the box, and discovered contents that were not the same as what we got before. In other words, the reason the brown coloring hadn’t worked is that we didn’t have brown coloring. Just the box the brown coloring was supposed to be in.

Someone had been opening boxes and trading the contents back and forth, no doubt thinking it was quite funny to imagine, say, someone dying their hair red and ending up with blonde. Ha. Ha.

We spoke to the people at the service desk. They were shocked – shocked, I say -- to discover someone had done such a thing, and promised quick retaliation in the form of automatic weapons and surface to air missiles, and a refund.

Having picked a new box with the seal firmly in place, Charis applied the stripper and the new, really brown this time, hair coloring. Soon, in geological terms, she finished her work, and presented me with her sister’s new look.

Jillian makes a fine redhead. Problem is, her hair was supposed to be – say it together – brown.

If you really want them to get along: Put 'em on a boat.

 

Apparently only so much can be done to repair hair that once glowed with the same intensity as a red giant star. Still, I thought things worked out okay, even if the one hour job stretched out over a weekend. In the end her hair looked okay, and eventually she turned up with a different color. Besides, no one died.

Several days later I went to my regular stylist for a haircut, and related this story to her. She explained that BHM had been fighting this problem for some time. So much for the people at the service desk being shocked, huh?

Somewhere, some poor soul who wanted orange hair was very upset. And brown.

 

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

 

 

Dog Dental Catches K-9's Canine

 With blogs like this I've learned to make it abundantly clear: He's OK.

Beowulf is about fourteen, as near as we can figure, which is Methuselah in human years. According to the Bible, Moses lived to be 120; Beowulf is that close to making it to the promised land. What that brings with it, at least for owners, is worry. After all, we've had him for ten years. That's way older than anything ever found in the back of my refrigerator. Except that one time. Let's not talk about that.

So when the side of his face started to get sensitive, we worried. When his snout swelled up to grizzly bear size, it was time for a run to the doggy ER, which does indeed exist. It turns out he had a tooth abscess, which is every bit as horrible as it sounds. He had to be on antibiotics for weeks before they could even think about treating it.

We thought about it, of course. A lot. For three weeks.

As you can see, by the time we took him in for the surgery, he was feeling pretty good.

I felt guilty about that. Dental work and I have a long history, and there's no "good" about it.

He had a tooth removed, and ended up with stitches where the abscess was, um, abscessing. The first day that didn't bother him much, what with how very, very drugged he was.

"Duuuuddddeeee .... good, good stuff ...."

It got a little harder after that, although we were given pain pills that, it turns out, were for him, not me. Not that he was hungry, but a roll of turkey lunch meat with a lump in it goes a long way.

Every time we coaxed him close to the food he'd lay down, and just look at us. Since getting him in the car for our Pet ER trip is probably how I screwed up my knee a few weeks ago, you can imagine how anxious I was not to move him around. So mostly we let him sleep, although he would periodically stagger to his feet and do his regular patrol.

 

I know what you're thinking: "But Mark, aren't you taking advantage of Beowulf's medical problem to put out a cheap blog?"

Well, yes. But in my defense, it's not cheap, it's free ... and the subject remains cute and photogenic.

Besides, it's compensation for how I completely freaked out when Emily took the bandage off his leg and I thought I was looking at doggie bone. (I wasn't--they'd just shaved him down to his skin, and I've never seen his skin before.)

The important thing, and let me stress this: He's improving.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Selling Soap ... I Mean, Fiction

 

I sometimes forget I need to sell the soap every now and then, so here's some soap. Not really--actually, there's a little sex in this novel, so it might be the opposite of soap.

https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Red-Mark-R-Hunter-ebook/dp/B01MRZ52DM/

When hitting a deer leaves her stranded in rural Michigan, Kirsten Veiss signs on as an air personality for the maddening, and sexy, Aaron Debolt. It might be love, eventually—unless Kirsten is the one sabotaging Aaron’s radio station.

 

 Remember, every time you buy a book a librarian has a good dream. Keep the librarians happy.

TrueHumor Features My True Humor

 August is Mark Hunter month on Truehumor.com!

No, I'm not making this up. Why do people always laugh when I talk about humor? In fact, you can find it here:

https://www.truehumor.com/

Thanks go to Richard Magurno, who wanted to highlight the humor of real life, and maybe get people to lighten up a little. So he features one humorist a month--I assume, since August is my month. Although to be fair, August is usually pretty slow for everyone.

It's a Letterkenny thing, look it up.

 

So he's rerunning three of what he thought were my funnier columns, and I think they're pretty good, too. Sometimes I'm write about these things. (See what I did, there?) Go check out his website, and support the other writers on there, too!

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"