The streets run red with the signs of revolution. Thousands of footsteps march their way across the roads of Hong Kong, blocking traffic to the dismay of many confused drivers. It’s not people they’re worried about; it's hamsters.
“We demand hamster vaccines and we demand them now! Give them quarantine! Rodents are people too!” Rallying cries screech into the air as the crowds swarm the area surrounding LegCo. Scurrying besides the shoes of the protestors a small parade of hamsters, all wearing very small masks. Rebels.
To recall the events of the Great Hamster Culling is to recall a turning point in our generation. Hamsters from a local pet store were found to carry the Delta variant of Covid - the government's immediate response was to euthanize them en masse. Now, an era of change has washed over all the citizens in Hong Kong; as those 2,000 hamsters were brutally murdered, our public conscious finally realised what our society needed: equal medical rights for rodents.
The painful memories can still be felt today. A flurry of cries came from the humans who had to give up their furry friends. When we interviewed the remaining first-hand witnesses, one of them was especially distraught and burst into tears.
“We had Jerry over for about 2 years, but he caught Covid. We had to let him go.” The witness then showed us a framed portrait of Jerry, who was actually very sickly looking and quite nauseating to look at.
However, this was still in spite of the virus only appearing in European hamsters that were imported on December 22 of 2021. Jerry was not European and was two breaths away from dying of old age. The euthanasia hysteria had consumed pet owners, leading their own hamsters to a seat on death row.
The crowd holds up signs that bear slogans like “Hamsters are people too!” A protestor has brought an oversized hamster cage and is sitting in it as a form of peaceful protest.
“Hamsters built the foundations this very city sits upon,” explained the protestor through the cage’s bars. “Without hamsters, we’d have no freedom. No justice. No spinning wheels. We rest upon the shoulders of giants. Giant hamsters.”
“Medical inequality must not go unchallenged,” said another protestor. “Speciesism is at an all time high; if we keep killing hamsters instead of giving them proper vaccinations, who’s next? Our dogs? Our lizards? Our Madagascar hissing cockroaches?”
Despite the passion for hamster vaccines a large majority of citizens appears to have, a counter movement against proper hamster COVID procedures has sprung up in retaliation.
“What if the hamsters don’t want the vaccines? We are ALLOWED to have freedom of choice. You can’t strip away a hamster's rights like that,” says hamster sociologist Dr. Cullen.
Some even claim that hamster vaccines have actually been proven to be ineffective. “My cousin’s hamster got vaccinated against polio 3 years ago, and it died just 2 years later. All these so-called “hamster rights activists” actually just want to give your hamsters autism and brain cancer,” states an anonymous Facebook user.
We reached out to a hamster whose family had been massacred in the cullings; unfortunately we got no response.
Back on the streets, a massive paper-mache statue of beloved cartoon character (and hamster) Hamtaro has been constructed on a moving float. In his stubby little hamster fingers is a medical syringe. He is a sign for times to come, and those times will certainly be unprecedented.
