Millie Says “Hi”!

Hallo guys!  Miss me?

I’ve been keeping myself busy, exploring my new home.

Once a day I get to go out in my new green ball.  At first I didn’t quite know what to do in it and just sat there and groomed myself but I soon learnt that it’s really fun!  I get to go around the house looking at new things!  I even turbo-ed up to the carpeted hallway once and hurtled into all the rooms, wow that was an exciting experience!

Here I am in one of my more pensive moments.

My mummy is always trying to get me to sit in her hand – she tries to trick me with lots of seeds in her palm.  I still don’t like to be held much though, but I don’t mind stepping all over her hands to get somewhere.

My other favourite activity is running in my wheel.  I run in it lots and lots.  After I run I groom myself and sometimes have a nibble, especially if mummy and daddy are on hand to feed me.  But sometimes I get tired and fall asleep mid-groom.

Here I am, fast asleep on my wheel.

Sometimes I am in such a deep sleep that I roll off the wheel.  On this occasion I fell off head-first and faceplanted into my lavender sawdust.

I still stayed fast asleep though.

Obviously I also love to have lots of little nibbles.

My mummy was disturbing my feeding time, yodeling “Millie menini~~~” and other silly names at me so I looked to see what she was on about.

Aren’t I a pretty girl?  My mummy and daddy think I am very photogenic!

Tata everyone, till next time!

Tiny, Adorable Little Thing

GM and I were dying to come home today to see our little hamster.  I was worried that she wouldn’t be comfortable so it was a huge relief to see her alive and well.  In fact, this morning the first thing I did when I got up was check on her and she was curled up in a ball sleeping in a corner of her cage and I was actually worried that she wasn’t breathing and had frozen to death =(  It’s not even cold since it’s summer!  Either I’m really paranoid or this sort of anxiety is common for first time small pet owners.  It’s just that she’s so tiny and sweet, she just seems so vulnerable.

I think GM and I are doing well with her and have broken new ground!  I’m really happy.  Apparently it can take months for a hamster to get to know its owners.  When we got home today she was standing on her wheel in a “heightened alert” state and shivering.  I think she was scared of us =(  I was really sad because I feel bad that she’s probably terrified and unhappy when all we want to do is love her and be good to her.  But then later on in the evening I put some seeds on my fingertips and stuck my hand next to her whilst she was running in her wheel.  At first she pretended to ignore my hand but then after a while she’d sniff my hand for a split second and turn back to her running again.  She did this loads of times.  I just sat there for ages with my hand in her cage,  not moving in order not to scare her.   She gradually sniffed my hand for longer and at one point she started gnawing so I thought she might start eating the seeds from my hand and she did!  First she nipped the seeds from my hand really quickly but as she got more confident that I wasn’t going to hurt her she got more daring and ventured closer and put her hand on my finger!!!!!  It was the cutest thing ever!  She grabbed a seed off my fingertips and stood really close to me, resting both her hands on my fingers whilst holding her seed and nibbling it.  Seriously adorable.

We’ve decided to call her Millie =)  She looks more like a Millie and it’s an easier name to say over and over again.  Sigh, so cute.

Nice to Meet You Everyone!

We’re really excited.  I don’t think I can sleep tonight.  Because we bought a hamster!!

We got her tonight at around 8pm and we’ve been watching her all night.  And we want to keep watching her.  It’s a girl hamster and she’s really sweet.  GM is besotted because it’s his first ever pet!  In fact, it was his idea to get a hamster, I think he has been hankering after a pet ever since we went to my mate’s and played with her cat who is really affectionate and lovely.  Even I love that cat, I even miss it sometimes!

We’ve bought her a cool country-style home complete with rustic cottage.  Isn’t it cute?  Her bedding is lavender scented!

This is her first step into her new home.  Aww.

Syrian hamsters are nocturnal creatures so she’s been really active the last hour or so, exploring her new house and all its nooks and crannies.  At the moment she’s doing some running in her wheel!

Halloooo!

We still don’t know what to name her.  I’ve been looking at baby names on the internet the whole night.  We’ve kind of narrowed the choices down to Millie or Daisy.  What do you all think?

Land of the Famous Five

When you were reading about the adventures of the Famous Five is this what you imagined Cornwall to be like?

Lets Go For a Walk – Part 2

Besides cornflower fields there was also a plum orchard and a field of poppies.  I really like poppies, they’re so casually, carelessly pretty.  They also had daffodils and a bluebell wood but unfortunately they were already out of season.  We must remember to go again earlier in the summer next year so we can catch the daffodils and bluebells.

The farm also had a members-only fishing lake.  Annual membership is more than a £100 per person otherwise I would have been tempted to join just to give fishing a try.  Instead we contented ourselves with feeding the ducks and fishes at the designated feeding point.

That fish cutout had a bell attached to it and the worker in the farm shop told GM to pull on the rope to ring it so as to attract the fish to the top of the water.

We found though that chucking fistfuls of fish food in the water was the best way of getting the fish up to the surface.  They were extremely greedy; all fighting for the food with a ravenous intensity, their mouths gaping.  To be honest they were really off-putting.  They fought each other so hard that some fish would end up on top of their rivals out of the water, splashing so hard that the water got onto us.

I much preferred the ducks.  They liked their food too but they were altogether more genteel about it.  As was befitting the tranquil picture of countryside that they belonged to.

I don’t know what these were.  Maybe they were pheasants?

After feeding the fish and ducks we walked back round to where we started off, past the sunflowers on the other side.

As well as the big field of cheery yellow flowers.  It was an idyllic picture of the countryside in the summer.

Maybe it didn’t look like much in the pictures but our walk took us about an hour because there was much more to it than I can show you, and also we spent lots of time stopping and admiring random things along the way.

We visited the farm shop because I wanted to get some plums.  Sadly they didn’t have any.

For some reason I really like whole carrots including the tops.  I just like the look of them.

I liked these shell things too, I think they might be ashtrays.

These bottles were so pretty.  I didn’t buy any though.

Some other pretty bottles, this time in the coffee shop.

In the morning after seeing the selection of cakes and other baked goods on offer we had already agreed that we would go back for tea and cake after our walk.

GM had a scone and I had a piece of what I hoped was lemon drizzle cake.  And it was!  Very good cake it was too, with visible strands of lemon zest in the sponge.  Lovely lovely cake.

GM and I are completely in love with the countryside now.  We just hope that the weather will continue to be good during the weekends because we have a few other walks and activities planned.  We’re really getting to appreciate where we live because it’s completely amazing that we’ve got all this in close proximity to us.  It’s kind of a comforting thought to me, that we have charming England as foreigners imagine it so close at our fingertips.