Can Hamsters be depressed? I need to do more research into certain animals. Not many people are googling symptoms of depression for hamsters, at least at the age of 10 I wasn't.

I love animals, except birds, I have a HUGE fear of birds. That's another story that we won't get into right now. When I was a child my parents gifted me a hamster, I named him Teddy, he was super cute with fur the color of caramel. He loved to play in the mazes I created and on the spinning wheel in his cage. So a few nights of him being a part of our family, I woke up to noises of banging in his cage. I didn't think anything of it, maybe he was going extra hard on his wheel to work off dinner. The following night I heard the same noise. I turned on the light to find Teddy hanging from the top of his cage by his paws. He saw me staring and then just dropped to the bottom. Freaked out, I ran into my parents room and told them what Teddy was doing...he was trying to hurt himself. Of course being 10, they thought my imagination was getting the best of me, so the next night I woke them up so they could see it for themselves. It was confirmed, Teddy was trying to hurt himself. Why else would a seemingly happy animal hang from the top of a cage and consistently drop over and over again? I was so upset.

As if Teddy knew the inevitable of his fate, aka me returning a suicidal hamster to the pet store, one night I hear my dad scream and then a bang. Immediately I ran into my parents room, wondering what happened. He responded with, "something was on my face, I smacked it and it flew across the room and hit the wall." I knew then it wasn't just "something", it was Teddy. My dad and mom knew it too. My dad then apologized for flinging Teddy as he didn't know what it was crawling on him in the dark. It also goes to show how agile and determined Teddy was. He broke out of his cage, crawled across the hallway to my parents room got up to the bed somehow and was crossing over my dad. To do what? I don't know, but my guess is to jump out of the window next to my dad. I'm not sure why he tried to kill himself by jumping from the top of the cage or trying to jump over my dad to go out the window. I loved Teddy, but apparently hamsters can get depressed too. Obviously the saying doesn't apply just to Annie and Jay Z, it was a hard knock life for Teddy as well.

PS- Teddy was fine, we took him back to the pet store in the following days. I also got another hamster and named him "Teddy II". Clearly my imagination only went so far in regards to pet names.

His cage looked similar to this one. Maybe he was mad it was purple?

I'm from upstate NY. Well not upstate like Albany, but if you're not from NYC and from NYS everyone in NYC says it's upstate.

Since childhood, my family and I would go to the Palisades mall. It was one of our go to shopping areas outside of Garden State Mall or in CT. Within the food court of the Palisade's Mall, Wendy, the character used for Wendy's fast food chain was brown. You're thinking now, "ok Brooke is delusional". I get it, that is always the reaction that people would say when I would say she's brown. Like how is Wendy a brown woman with red hair used as a symbol within a national mall's eatery? I don't have the answer, just know that she was. Wendy has always been a brown woman in the Palisades mall.

A little backstory, on our second date a little over 10 years now, Orande and I went to the Palisades mall and saw our first movie together "The Pursuit of Happyness" (if you haven't ever seen this movie please do it for your own well being, it's amazing). Back then I had been telling him how Wendy was a brown woman in that mall, he would laugh and be like "What? That's crazy". But it all changed on that date when he saw it for himself. So now I had a witness outside of my family that I wasn't crazy.

Recently as in, a few weeks ago, Orande and I went to the Palisade's mall to go to the movies with our friends Eric and Tasha. Note on the current AMC theater there: they have PLUSH RECLINING LEATHER SEATS! Orande and I were acting like we've never seen a reclining chair. It was amazing & we will go back there just to sit in seats like that. The lux movie life --- any way back to the actual story. When we got to the mall with our friends my mission was clear: find brown Wendy and show her to our friends. Well I found her and she was white. I don't know how that even happened! For more than 30 years she had always been brown, now in 2017 she's white?! I blame everything on #45. I say she would still be brown if it wasn't for him, who would think to change her from being brown to white? Leave her to be brown and happy!

I was upset because I wanted to show more people that this unicorn of a Wendy was real. I wish I could find a picture I took of her when she was a brown woman. It's ok though, I know it and so do thousands of people who have seen her. Just goes to show that if mermaids are real, so is African American Wendy.

The original brown turned white Wendy.