Frozen Hamster
Admittedly this doesn't involve me, but my mother, so:

When I was 16 my family moved from the tropical delights of balmy Warwickshire to the relative boring pedestrianess of Rio de Janeiro. My sisters were enrolled in the local British School and quickly became friends with large numbers of kids.

Sister no. 2 becomes friends with the daughter of a British businessman, who after a year of us living there was posted to Thailand.

This left the issue of his daughters 2 pet hamsters. Being kindhearted (to animals if not relations) sister no. 2 takes them in and puts them in their very own playpen/cage outside her room. All fine and dandy.

One day during the blazing hot summer the maid we hired was hoovering in that room. She'd earlier been playing with the hamsters and they seemed fine. In any case, she was now vigorously hoovering and noticed that the hamsters were not moving. She fetched my mum, who came over, looked at the hamsters, and decided they were dead.

Obviously it wasn't a good idea to keep two dead animals out all day when the temperature was about 45C, and on the other hand my sisters would want to bury the hamsters... so my mother decided to put them in the freezer to keep them for when my sisters came back.

With much sadness on the maid and my mothers part, they wrapped the hamsters in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer. All this time the hamsters gave all indications of being dead.

So far, so good.

My sisters came home from school about 5pm. My mother tells them the hamsters are dead, they start crying, and my mother goes to get the hamsters from the hamster morgue.

She opened the freezer, grabbed the bag they were in to find it was... empty. There was a hole in the back of the back... and right at the back of the freezer were two hamsters... frozen solid.

Apparently what had happened was that the hamsters had been freaked out by the sound of the hoover... had played dead... and then been frozen alive as they were assumed to be dead.

Thats the story of how my mother inadvertantly froze my sisters pets.

But it doesn't end there... mum was so ashamed of what she'd done she told my sisters that they'd already been buried, and when my dad got back got him to take the hamsters downstairs to the porter of the building who claimed he knew a pet cemetary to bury them. Later that year I found out from the guy he'd cooked and eaten them instead.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 17:04, Reply)