Rainbow salad and weevils in the hamster cage

Friday nights are our salad + roast potatoes night as I make a tabouleh and rainbow salad every week. The rainbow salad is proving so popular that I’ve started making it a couple of times a week and leaving a bowl in the fridge so people can help themselves. Elizabeth in particular loves it. It’s very healthy and cheap to make, containing only red cabbage, carrots, kale, and cannellini beans as the main ingredients. I then add four generous tablespoons of olive oil and three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Don’t cheap-out on the olive oil and vinegar as these are crucial to the flavour. Get the cheapest kale you can find if you want to save money but a good extra virgin olive oil and excellent apple cider vinegar are essential. I also sprinkle mixed seeds on top.

Yesterday I saw some tiny black moving dots in Lucille’s cage near the food bowl. I went to sleep worried that she might have mites which are awful blood-sucking parasites. We hardly ever see Lucille as she’s very much a night-owl and doesn’t like humans.

It has been a year since Lucille almost died after having a massive mammary tumour surgically removed. I never thought she’d survive the week let alone a whole year. I got up at 3am last night to try to see her as you really need to see hamsters to assess their health. When she had the tumour she was coming out a lot during the day which was a likely consequence of being sick. Last night I managed to see her briefly on the wheel before she disappeared into one of her burrows. She looks in great health.

This morning I got straight into trying to identify the bugs and to my relief it looks like they’re bog standard weevils. This makes sense given they were in her food. But it did mean I was forced to do a major clean-out of her cage and chuck all the food away otherwise the little buggers will spread throughout the house and infest our food.

Her cage is very bare now as I had to chuck all the sprays also but I’ll get more this week.

The bad news is I’ve discovered the same problem with Angelina’s cage so I’m going to have to do it all again now for her. At least, unlike Lucille, Angelina quite likes us and is happy to come out which will make a cage clean much easier.