It’s a new two-story home with a nice grand lookout area at the top of the structure, with lots of square footage! Oh, by the way, we’re talking about a new home for Fuzzy, our dwarf hamster, in case you were conned into reading this blog thinking Karen and I made some additional investment in real estate. Let’s recall where Fuzzy lived for the past 10 months…
Aside from sleeping and eating, his only other activities were running in the perpetual spin wheel and wiping the window with his paws, armed with overgrown toe nails. We decided that with half the space of the aquarium taken up by Fuzzy’s household items, it lacked the space for him to explore and run around, so we decided to upgrade his home and provide additional physical activities for his feeble mind. When we returned from Petco, we assembled his new home…
Good news and bad news. The good news is that the new luxury home had an oversized bedroom with vaulted ceiling on the first floor, a dining room on the second, and a view terrace at the top. The bad news? Fuzzy didn’t know how to climb the tubes to get from first floor to second floor. He would consistently climb about a third of the way, get freaked out, and turn around. As a rodent, he’s got the innate ability to crawl into tight spaces, right? I guess not after living in an aquarium for 10 months.
So we placed the luring sunflower seed at the top of the tube and left the house for a Labor Day weekend family gathering. When we returned, the sunflower seed sat untouched, and Fuzzy was still ceaselessly working out on the spin-wheel without food or water. From time to time, he laid still on the floor with puppy eyes. What did this mean? Could our little white Fuzzy be athletically challenged? Is he unable to accomplish simple feats that his peers have been excelling at for years?
We decided to wait for him to make a desperate attempt at finding water by running through the tube, but it never happened. Since we didn’t want to wake up the next morning with a dead rodent in the cage, we decided it was time for some tough love. While Fuzzy never made it up the tube, he did occasionally enter the tube to explore, and it was during one of these moments that I stuck my palm out and sealed the entrance to the tube. He immediately noticed something was wrong, turned around, tried to squeeze his nose through the gaps of my finger but to no avail. He also attempted clawing his way back to the house, but that too was futile. Finally after some struggle, he realized that there was no way back, so he built up his courage and started clawing his way up. He slipped a few times along the way, but he was determined to reach the other end of the tunnel. Eventually, he made it to the top, where he found himself some water, some food, and a huge sunflower seed, his favorite. While Karen and I were busy watching TV, he even managed to squeeze up to the lookout point and enjoy the piece of peanut we accidentally left in there. Throughout the night, he proudly exercised his newfound ability by continually climbing and descending between the first and second floor, and occasionally up the lookout point. It was certainly a relief to know we haven’t been raising a wimp all this time.
Now I could have played the role of a human escalator and shuttled Fuzzy back and forth between the levels with my hand, but then he would never feel challenged to climb the tube and would be missing out on enjoying his new habitat to its fullest. It struck me that very often, we’re like Fuzzy. We’re so comfortable with where we are and we become complacent and don’t realize our potential. At that moment, God may block or take away what we’re so used to. While we may be upset, fearful, or be afraid of uncertainty, as long as we trust in God and know He wants the best for us, we can press on facing the unknown. In the end, we’ll accomplish what He knows we’re capable of all along, and open up possibilities that we didn’t even know existed.
Now if only Fuzzy can learn how to use a toilet…
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