The Hamster of Atonement

We are today sad to announce the passing of Rubbles, the community hamster.

As many of you will be aware, Rubbles has never been a terribly happy hamster of late - you will recall that the problem started when we used a "sin-shredder" in an act of alternative worship. By the time that someone got totally frustrated with the noise of the shredder, and shoved a pound of plasticine it it, we had accumulated quite an amount of shredded paper, on which people had written the things they felt they needed to confess.

In an environmentally friendly kind of way, we used the shreddings to line Rubbles's cage, and that's where the trouble started. We believe he may have eaten some of the bedding, and inadvertently acquired the sins that had been disposed of on the pieces of paper.

Naturally, the contents of the sin-shredder were confidential. However given that Rubbles went on to a short but brilliant career as an internet banker, starting up a pre-pack limited company that specialised in selling bundles of sub-prime mortgages onto RBS, we suspect that greed may have featured highly.

The vet believes that Rubbles died of a hard heart. And we think he may be right.