When All Else Fails...Read About Black Holes & Quantum Physics?

I am not a religious woman. In fact, some of my more conservative, fundamental friends... all one of them, even call me an Atheist. Yet in my attempt to explain the pain and loss in this life to Al, I've found myself veering towards the fundamentalist version of a "Slippery When Wet" sign.

The loss of Cooper The Hamster on top of the impending loss of his home, friends, backyard, bedroom, blah, blah, blah. On top of the loss of his dad, on top of the loss of his sister, on top of the loss of his mother for a year-which proved to him, he says, that God did not exist- has just about done Mer-boy in, regarding any belief at all in an omnipotent being of light.

I am methodical, logical, and had it not been for science and the invention of ovulation detector kits, am convinced I would not have become a mother. It was my will that made it so... not any airy-fairy supernatural occurrence deemed a "Miracle" by my 'one' friend.

Then, just when I'm certain the sphere of spiritual enlightenment is all but closed to myself...a hamster restores not only mine, but Al's faith also. In what exactly I do not know...but we gots da feva! Can we get a halelujia?... Halelujia! Can we get an Amen?... Amen! Can we get a...

Cooper The Hamster has returned!

Right through the same hole in the kitchen he exited through 24 hrs ago. Frazzled, tousled, and definately looking as though a common house mouse had had her way with him...but returned none the less.

The hole dear readers...leads into the backyard. The HUGE backyard, swarming with predators able and willing to consume a naive , provacatively dressed young hamster on a hot mid-western summer's night.

And yet...

they didn't.