Heat Seeking Missiles

So when I was in vet school we had a decent exotics training, especially since our professor Dr. Mayer was the most entertaining lecturer ever. And when we learned about the various small mammals (guinea pigs, gerbils, hamsters, rats, etc.) those who work with exotics always refer to hamsters as the fiesty ones. This particular professor used to call them heat seeking missiles with their uncanny ability to bite when least expecting. So this story from work seems quite appropriate...

At Angell you are "on the list" when you are on emergency, which means for a 4-5 hour allotted time you are seeing emergencies that come in off the street and are placed on a "Emergency List" in order of arrival. When you are a resident on the list you are also often "Triage Officer" and what this means is that you will be paged regardless of whether or not you are already in with an emergency to "Evaluate" any emergency that arrives that might be "unstable". If it is unstable, it gets taken back to CCU where the doctors there can start stabalizing it, if i is stable it sits with the owner until we can get to it. Then the triage officer goes back to their emergency or takes that one if they are free, and eventually everyone gets seen. (I do find it funny when people get irritated if they have to wait more then an hour, when realistically you will wait 2-3x that amount in a human ER).

So whenever I get paged to evaluate an exotic animal, I always ask the owner if they bite, which even if they say no to me does not mean the animal won't, but at least the animal has a previous history of being friendly with people.
This weekend I got the page "Please eval hamster possible concussion". Interesting, didn't know they got concussions...
I get up there and there is a woman with a cage crying, and she tells me the hamster accidentally fell 3 feet and he is acting strange. I look in the cage and he is fluffed in the back of the cage, squinty eye, but breathing fine. I ask her the infamous "does he bite?" and she responds "Oh no, never bitten anyone, he is SO friendly". I am worried about head trauma in the little guy and want to listen to his heart and lungs and make sure they sound ok. I place my hand in the cage and he crawls over sniffing and starts to climb on to my hand. I think I am in the clear when out of nowhere the little monster bites my finger sharply and runs to the corner of the cage. I let out the loudest "OWW!!" and of course being Labor Day weekend all 3 receptionists and 4-5 clients waiting to check in or out drop what they are doing and stare at me. I haven't turned that red in awhile, the owner of the hamster is apologizing and I actually apologized to her for being so unprofessional. She takes the hamster out of the cage so I can listen to it with my stethoscope and of course suddenly she shrieks:My god, I didn't notice, he is bleeding!!" I look down and have to explain, "No miss, your hamster is fine, all the blood is coming from my finger where he bit me, please excuse me while I go clean this wound, but your hamster is stable and can wait with you until the exotics doctor can see it."
That was a fun triage!