Some time ago, I went to Costco and, among other things, bought some of their rotisserie chicken–five legs and thighs, yum. The legs and thighs are still connected when you get them. After finishing a few of them for lunch and saving the rest for dinner, I started to throw the bones and scraps in the trash–and then realized that Mocha, my hamster, might enjoy chewing on the meat left on the bones. So I placed a leg-and-thigh bone scrap in front of her cage and opened the door. Mocha, sniffing some form of food, obligingly came out to enjoy the payoff. She was definitely interested in this particular morsel.

However, I did not expect her to do what she did next. You see, I expected that she would chew off whatever she wanted, then, as normal, scurry back into her cage and stash the booty. Mocha, it turns out, was feeling much more ambitious that day. You see, she decided to bring the entire leg-and-thigh bone back into her cage and then stash it. Which of course would be problematic, because the bone was longer than she was, not to mention bent in the middle at the joint, and she had to carry it, in her mouth, up the side of her cage to the door.

Meanwhile, I was in the living room, and became aware of her valiant efforts when I heard repeated knocking noises and went to investigate. She had already spent several minutes trying to get the whole thing back in her cage, and after I watched her for a few minutes, I decided to get this on film. My video camera being at school, I used the video feature on my digital camera. The results are available in a link below. Needless to say, she was absolutely hilarious. Completely unfazed by the enormity of her project, and seemingly clueless as to depth and size perception, she nonetheless doggedly continued her great struggle with the chicken bone. At one point, she fell over backwards and, with the rather large chicken bone clamped into her jaws, was unable to right herself. She was not about to let go of that bone, though. So instead of letting go, righting herself, and trying again, she spent about 45 seconds on her back, furiously waving all four paws in the air, trying to turn herself over while pinned by a chicken leg. She was finally able to do so, and set back to her main task. The whole event lasted more than fifteen minutes. This was one determined hamster.

The fun did not stop when, to my amazement, she actually succeeded in getting the whole thing in her cage. You see, she likes to stuff food into her habitrail tubes. You know those commercials for moving companies that have a pair of idiot movers trying to bring a sofa through a door the wrong way? You know, whump! Hmm. Try again. Whump. That didn’t work. One more time. Whump! Hmm. Maybe it’ll work now. Whump! Well, that’s what Mocha was like. Completely oblivious the the fact that a 6-inch-long bone could not fit perpendicularly into a two-inch tube, she nonetheless spent about five minutes trying to do exactly that, until it dawned on her tiny hamster brain that maybe by getting it in end-first, it would fit. Eureka!! It worked!

So enjoy “The Great Chicken Struggle,” it’s hilarious. Perry Como has even been added. View it in small (2MB), medium (8MB), or large (15MB) sizes. The files are QuickTime movies (so QT is needed to view them. If you have trouble viewing the larger two on your browser, then download them directly to disk, it may work better that way.