Personal Experience's

My first memory of meeting anything to do with the Syrian Hamster was from a set of collection cards that PG Tips tea leaf boxes had in them.  I can't remember all the details but I can remember a collection entitled "Endangered Species of the World".  One of these cards was the Syrian "Golden" Hamster.  I seem to recall the card refering to the fact that in 1958 there was an estimated population of 8 in the wild.  These memories may be slightly wrong as it is a long time ago and the mind can play tricks over time.  If anyone is that interested in the exact details then I'm sure a little investigation would result in the correct information the card in question gave.

My next encounter with the animal was when a neighbour enquired if me and my family had lost one as he had found one in his garden and put it in a secure cage in his garage till he found its owner.  My children were young but had never had a hamster as a pet and I wouldn't have known what it's needs were so on that ocassion I declined the offer of homing it if he was unsucessful in finding its rightful owner.

The first hamster I actually had the pleasure of owning was a lovely satin blue mink that was aquired from "Pets at Home" which was named Lola.  Within a week it was quite at home in an evening runing around in the conservatory.  It would run up and over me and my wife, climb everything and anything from the front of loudspeakers to the bamboo blinds.  It would usually wait at the top of things to be rescued and brought back down to earth rather than jump and possibly hurt itself on the laminate floor in the room.
Within 7 days I realised the enormous appetite they have for escaping.  It's when you find yourself at 11pm lifting a run of floor boards the full length of the house and have a neighbour knocking the front door asking what the trouble is that you realise that these little furry animals are very addictive!  Yes it had climbed a pair of water pipes and managed to get into the floor boards.
3 days later, with cracked wall-paper around the fireplace where it had fallen down one evening, the carpets and floorboards up in one bedroom and the landing, and the little creature was back in it's rightful cage looking a little weary and sooty, with a vow that better vigilence would be observed in future!  
However do we ever really learn?  A stereo surround sound knawed through and various other signs of hamster teeth at work, like holes in carpets and insulation from the backs of fridges and freezers missing in places and I think the answer is a resounding "No!"  One thing that you do learn is how to find and catch them with the least amount of stress and worry involved.
From this one female hamster called Lola the bug was well and truely imbedded.  From her I learnt how to mate hamsters and an enormous amount about the genetics of hamsters and their colours.  I have been a member of one hamster club or another in one form or another since the January after getting that first hamster.  Currently a member of "The Northern Hamster Club"

So you can probably see that my interest in these creatures that have a personality quite individual to themselves is consisting of a natural inherent knowledge of their closeness to extinction in the wild along with the funny things they get up to from time to time together with the challenge of producing specimens of the required colour for showing.(written by Paul)