Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [16]
“I am a philosopher,” said Chum. “I think about life.”
“Life?” Ralph was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Chum sat staring into space so long that Ralph thought he was never going to answer. Finally the hamster said, “Take you for instance. Just where do you think you’re going on that wheel?”
“No place, I guess,” admitted Ralph. “I never thought much about it.”
“See what I mean?” said Chum. “You run and you run and you’re still in the same old cage.”
Ralph felt suddenly guilty, as if he had done something wrong, but was not sure what it was. “But I like running on my wheel,” he said, feeling that his answer was rather lame.
Chum did not bother to reply. He continued to sit, swinging, staring, thinking.
Ralph leaped to his wheel and began to run. His paws flew along the wires of the wheel, pushing it faster and faster until he looped the loop. He ran on and on until he began to tire. His paws touched the wires more and more slowly until Ralph coasted to a stop. Then he, too, sat staring and motionless. Where was he going? No place, that was where he was going. No place at all. With so many people feeding him, he was not even sure who owned him. Perhaps when the camp closed at the end of summer he would be turned out to the mercy of Catso and all those kittens. Drat Chum and his talk about life, thought Ralph crossly. He has spoiled all my fun.
Chum had still another habit disturbing to Ralph. Whenever his owner approached him with a bag of sunflower seeds, Chum suddenly appeared to change from a grouch into an agreeable pet. He climbed to the top of his cage, accepted sunflower seeds one by one, and stuffed them into his cheek pouches.
Feeding sunflower seeds to Chum became a daily event in the craft shop. The older campers and some of the counselors gathered around Lana to watch her feed Chum, and as she handed him the seeds they would count. “Fourteen…fifteen…” Ralph watched while Chum’s cheek pouches began to bulge. “Twenty-two…twenty-three…” Still Chum’s face stretched.
The old show-off, thought Ralph. “Twenty-seven…twenty-eight…” Chum had grown so top-heavy that Ralph was sure he would never make it to thirty.
“Thirty…thirty-one…” chanted the campers. Chum was having such difficulty hanging on that Ralph scarcely could bear to watch. “Thirty-three…” Those paws were slipping. “Thirty-four…” Chum could no longer support his weight. He fell to the bottom of his cage with a thump that made Ralph cringe.
“Thirty-four!” shouted Lana, who enjoyed the attention her pet had received from older boys and girls. “That’s Chum’s record!”
“Maybe he’ll hit thirty-five tomorrow,” someone said, as the campers lost interest in the hamster and went off to their riding lessons or back to their craft work.
Chum got to his feet rather groggily and went to the storehouse corner of his cage, where by placing his front paws behind his cheek pouches he pushed the seeds out of his mouth until they lay in a heap at his feet.
Ralph was disapproving of the whole performance. “That’s quite an act,” he remarked. “Doesn’t it hurt when you fall to the bottom of the cage?”
“Sure it hurts,” said Chum, as he pushed out the last sunflower seed. “But it’s worth it.”
“Just to show off?” asked Ralph.
“No, stupid,” said Chum. “For the sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds that I don’t have to pick out from a lot of alfalfa pellets. I perform; she pays off in sunflower seeds. That’s the way it goes.”
“Yes, but you get hurt,” said Ralph.
“I hate alfalfa pellets,” answered Chum simply.
Ralph’s turn came after lunch when the campers were in the dining hall singing a song that they obviously enjoyed but that Ralph found frightening.
“Bill Grogan’s goat was feeling fine,
Ate three shirts right off the line.”
Garf silently pushed open the screen door, and Ralph leaped from his wheel. Quickly Garf unlatched the door of the cage and extended a sunflower seed with his fingers. This time he was not singing, but Ralph still did not trust him. “Come on, fellow,” coaxed Garf. Ralph retreated to the corner of his cage behind