Weird Of The Week

My mother is an interesting person and has interesting things happen to her all the time. I have always been impressed with the way she is able to be calm and capable in any crisis. Nothing ever seems to shake her. She has seen more than her share of the strange in her 71 years. She is especially tuned to people and things that are nearing death. We joke that she can 'hear the rattle'. We joke to keep from freaking out when something bizarre happens around her.

It is nearly impossible to get my mother to stop moving or working so she still takes some nursing care shifts at a group home in our town. The other day she was doing some charting when the door bell to the house rang. By the time she got to the door, one of the clients had already opened it and was holding a donut box from Tim Hortons. It had just been left on the front step by the same person who rang the doorbell.

My Mom went into the kitchen to open the box while wondering who would be delivering donuts at 6 PM on a Sunday - only the box didn't contain donuts. It contained a DEAD HAMSTER. I asked if it was mutilated because that is the first thing you think of but apparently this hamster was dead of natural causes. And it wasn't a specific person's hamster - just your run of the mill, freshly dead, garden variety hamster...in a donut box...from Tim Horton's.

I had to laugh when my unflappable mother was more surprised that it wasn't a bomb. "Who would want to send you a donut box bomb? Someone who got a cold perogy at the Church's monthly perogy supper? I asked her. "Who would think to drop off their dead hamster to where I worked?" was her reply.

I am hoping that it's just some random local who sensed that his dead hamster would get a good burial at the group home rather than a nut who has delivered many similar packages all over the neighborhood. It doesn't seem like something that a person suddenly does on a whim. Delivery of dead pets to the homes of strangers just reeks of intent...and mental illness.

I will be interested to see if similar reports have been made to the RCMP. This could be a big deal. There could be rash of hamster suicides in our city which have only recently been determined to be MURDERS. We could have a hamster killer. He could uses a really small pillow to suffocate his victims. Then he could have written tiny suicide notes to leave behind at the crime scenes.

It's diabolical and brilliant if you think about it. Just the kind of thing that I would have thought up.

Do you think they are going to want to question me? Even if I am innocent I might be tricked into convincing myself that I put the hamster in the donut box...which I didn't. I just realized I don't have an alibi for that evening. I didn't think I would need one.