All my hamsters have died in the last six weeks or so, and Herbert's the last of them.

I didn't have many photos of Pickwick and Filkins, the Russian hamsters, largely because they were very fast and were likely to get into trouble in the brief period of time it took to set up and point the camera. Herbert was a little bit better; and here's one of her having a wash, appropriately enough, in the bathroom.

I found her dead in her cage this morning; she was 25 months old, which is respectable for a Syrian hamster, but I'm really going to miss them all. I'll be constantly reminded of Herbert in particular, because once I left her in the bathroom while I took what I thought would be a quick phone call. It took longer than I'd thought, and when I came back I noticed that she had chewed holes in the carpet in the corners of the room. She'd obviously got bored with one before moving on to the next. She was an expert in finding bad things to do in apparently innocent situations, but she did know her name, and one time when she managed to get under the floorboards she did actually come out when called. Eventually. That was why her name remained 'Herbert' even when it became it was apparent that she was female - which was not what the bloke in the shop had told me.

I hadn't realised that hamsters could have attitude, or, indeed, pull faces, until I got Herbert. She had a penchant for hanging upside down from the bars, or, later on, the mesh at the top of her cage. This is not a naturally tenable position for a hamster, and I always used to worry that she'd get hurt when she fell (normally after 3.5 seconds), but she never did, or when she used to climb to the top of her water bottle and jump off.

I'm still half expecting to hear the sound of the little chirrups Herbert used to make, or the high pitched indignant squeaks which made the munchkins sound like squeaky toys, and the scrabbling and wheels going...