Friends of ours wanted to get their young daughter a small pet of some kind and decided on a very cute Teddy Bear hamster. Teddy bear hamsters are hamsters which are a bit bigger than the typical hamsters and have longer hair and tend to be more friendly.
Their daughter became quickly attached and brought her hamster everywhere they went. Almost every weekend during the summer they travelled up to Collingwood to relax on a country property owned by their parents and "Mr. Teddy" seemed to enjoy going along for the ride.
One Sunday night I got a frantic phone call from our friends. They quickly relayed the story to me of how Mr. Teddy had somehow managed to get out of his cage while getting some air on the porch of the country home they had been visiting and was now nowhere to be found. They had to leave to come back to Toronto and asked me if I thought Mr. Teddy could survive in the "wild" or at least until they had a chance to come back up to look for him. I was honest with them and as delicately as possible stated that domestic hamsters are not designed to live outdoors in Canada and unfortunately there was a very high likelihood that he would succumb to a larger predator. The odds were very slim that he would survive.
To my utter surprise I got another phone call about 3 weeks later. It turns out that Mr. Teddy had been found ALIVE and WELL under the porch of the country home! He seemed to be enjoying his new digs when he was joyously scooped up by the young girl who was heartbroken by his loss.
Several weeks later the phone rang again. The family were concerned because Mr. Teddy had developed a couple of large lumps on his body. They asked me if it was something serious and I explained to them that I would need to examine Teddy first to determine. Although I didn't mention it to them I had a sinking feeling that he may indeed have something life threatening. Hamsters notoriously develop a lot of cancer.
The next day they arrived with Teddy in tow. From a distance he was very bright and alert but he looked a little deformed due to the very large swellings prominently displayed on each side of his body. It was a little difficult examining him as hamsters don't like to be restrained and his long hair obscured the view of the skin. Upon closer examination however, I found that each of the swollen regions had a small circular hole that was draining a clear fluid. As I was peering closely at one of the holes with a magnifying headloop I suddenly noticed that something moved within the hole. More intrigued I watched as a rhythmic increase and decrease in the fluid level within the hole became evident. Suddenly I realized what I was looking at. Teddy had Cuterebra!!
Cuterebra are larvae of the Rabbit Botfly. The larvae are gross looking pudgy maggot-like bugs which have a life cycle in which the eggs are deposited by the flies near rabbit burrows. These eggs are picked up on a host's skin by brushing into them and then the larvae hatch out of the eggs and seek entrance into the body of the host (usually a rabbit or rodent). They can migrate or burrow into the skin where they develop breathing ports or holes. It was these breathing holes that I was looking at on this poor little hamster and the movement I noted was the larvae breathing within the skin.
Although these grubs are incredibly gross, I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew I could help little Mr. Teddy. Within a few moments I had those squirming little larvae out of the hamster and out on the table. Mr. Teddy dodged another bullet and would go on to have a full lifespan.
Click here for a video of a Cuterebra being removed from a cat... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9afhHOK2JE0
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