Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [14]
“Where was I?” asked Chum. “Oh, yes—the frolics we had at night. And then…and then…” Chum’s voice shook with emotion.
Ralph waited quietly until the hamster was able to continue. “One day I was sound asleep in the corner of the cage. By then we had grown a lot, and I was on the bottom of the heap, but I didn’t feel squashed. I felt safe and cozy there beneath my brothers and sisters, when suddenly—” Chum stopped, unable to go on.
“Don’t stop now,” pleaded Ralph. “What happened?”
“—a great human hand, a hand that smelled of dog—”
Ralph shuddered.
“—reached in and picked up several of my brothers and sisters. Let me tell you, that woke us all up in a hurry. We were terrified. We scrambled around, trying to hide behind our mother, under the wheel, in some cedar shavings, anyplace. I was slower than the rest, because, you see, I was cramped from being slept on by brothers and sisters, and so the hand, that terribly doggy hand, got me. It didn’t matter. That hand got all us youngsters and turned us upside down in a most undignified fashion, and then we were put into two cages, boys in one and girls in another.”
“What for?” asked Ralph.
“Don’t rush me,” said Chum, picking up a sunflower seed in his paws and cracking it with his teeth. When he had eaten the kernels, he continued. “Let me tell you, it was a terrible shock. Shortly after, the doggy hand picked up our cage and loaded it into what is called a station wagon.”
“I know.” Ralph was eager to show off his knowledge. “I used to see them in the parking lot outside the hotel. They were always full of children and luggage and sometimes a dog or two.”
Chum ignored the interruption. “We soon found ours was not the only cage to go into the station wagon. Our sisters were loaded in beside us along with a box of turtles, a cage of rather downhearted canaries, and two large cages, one containing puppies and the other some very silly kittens. Oh yes, and a cage of white mice.”
“White mice,” said Ralph scornfully. “Anybody, not just owls, could see white mice in the dark.”
“Then the man with the doggy-smelling hands climbed into the front seat along with his wife, and we were off.”
“Where to?” asked Ralph.
“The county fair,” answered Chum, “and it was a terrible trip. Kittens mewed, puppies whimpered, turtles scrabbled around in their box—”
“What’s a county fair?” interrupted Ralph.
“A noisy place,” said Chum. “It’s full of people yelling, children laughing and shrieking, machinery that whirls and spins and plays music, all sorts of animals that neigh and moo and baa. It was hot and dusty, and our cages were set out in a booth. By that time we hamsters were exhausted. It had been light for several hours, and we hadn’t had a wink of sleep.”
“I know what you mean,” said Ralph with feeling.
“That was only the beginning,” continued Chum. “A steady stream of people, mostly children, passed our cages. Big, little, most of them sticky and all of them noisy. ‘Look, Mommy! Look, Daddy! Look at the darling little hamsters. I want one. Daddy, buy me a hamster!’ All morning long. Parents were better. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you can’t have a hamster. You didn’t take care of the last hamster you had. Come along. We don’t have time to look at hamsters.’ Then a whole busload of children, all of them wearing white T-shirts with letters across the front—”
“Camp T-shirts,” interrupted Ralph knowledgeably. “From Happy Acres.”
“—came crowding around the booth. They didn’t have any parents with them so they bought pets.”
“You?” asked Ralph.
“Me,” said Chum. “I was bought by that grubby girl with freckles. To make a long story short, the doggy hand stuffed me into a hot little cardboard box with a few so-called air holes poked into it, and I spent the rest of the day being jounced around, peeked at, and fed bits of Karmel-Korn.”
“Sounds good,” said Ralph.
“Maybe to a mouse.” There was a touch of scorn in Chum’s voice. “We rode in a bus to this camp, where a counselor put together a makeshift cage out of a bucket with a piece of screen bent over the top. After a few days the girl