The Hamster Switch

My girlfriend had all these pets in a GM-created fenced-in pet area on the side of the house with a little gate that worked and everything.

Each of the pets had their own names, 'cause in that game you could rename everything.

There was a sheep, and a couple squirrels, and I dunno what, I never really paid attention to it, I don't think there were any horses.

Anyways the animals were there in that pen even when we logged off.

This one time me and a buddy were practising magic spells inside the house and I accidentally killed one of her named pets with a fireball or something so me and him had to go out and find and tame and rename another animal just like the one I accidentally killed.

Y'know the Olde Hamster Switch.

'Cause there's no way she could tell the difference between the Old Kitten and the New Kitten, y'know?

That's not really the worst of it, though, the worst of it is that I looted and skinned her dead pet to get rid of the corpse faster.

And then sometimes I would log in first and I'd notice that somebody else besides me had killed one of her pets.

Y'know it just be laying there dead nobody would actually kill and skin a pet like I would to get rid of a body.

But since I had done it myself, and covered it up, I couldn't really be all outraged about it.

And to keep my girlfriend from making noises, I ended up covering up the pet crimes other people did by pulling the Olde Hamster Switch.

I got so good at pulling the Olde Hamster Switch that I began to take a sense of pride in it, and I'd cover up Dead Pet Crimes that I didn't even have anything to do with, just for the excitement of pulling a fast one on everybody.

And I'd imagined the frustration of the thwarted pet murderer who did it on purpose only to have the pet replaced before the owner could find out about it.

It was a Secret One Man War between the People Who Killed Pets and the Guy Who Brought Pets Back to Life.

And then I started to wonder if I was the only one, I mean, how many Pet Killers and Hamster Switchers were there?

How many times have these pets been replaced with a look alike?

How deep does this corruption go?

But I don't really care about all that so I forgot about it until now.

Seriously it was more like a I Love Lucy episode heh.