On hamsters...
James Lileks is a great writer.
I had a hamster as a kid. My mother hated mice, so it was a struggle for her to say yes, but she did. Later it escaped. In an act of surpassing cruelty I wadded up a fuzzy sock and stuck it at the bottom of her bed. The shriek peeled the wallpaper. I think it did something to the wall itself, no wallpaper would ever stay glued to that spot, as if she had somehow stripped from it a property we do not yet know, let alone understand. If they tear down the house birds will pass through that spot and feel a chill, and lose their feathers. It was a shriek like that.