Charles

**since the elections are over, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming**

Tonight during small group, a discussion question from the study on the last chapter of Tim Keller's King's Cross brought back to my mind a vivid story of a little buddy named Charles. While at the time, I didn't feel it appropriate to bring up the story, it's still a story I'd like to share with you. Before I dive in, here's a little background on Charles.

couldn't find a picture of Charles, so here's Chris feeding the successor

Charles was a hamster that lived in the AΓΩ house for two and a half years. He was a Christmas gift to us from ΑΔΧ (the christian sorority) in 2004. Charles enjoyed spending much of his time in random people's pocket curled up into a little ball. He was a trooper, surviving two summer breaks and three Christmas vacations, countless evenings of being passed around for everyone to hold and even having to be cut out of Levi's couch because he found the only hole to get to the underside. He survived in the AGO house for longer than anyone expected, by two years.

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, we got a distraught email from Keith Shively, one of the guys at the AGO house. He went into the active room to check on charles and fill up his water bottle when he noticed Charles wasn't moving and felt cold to the touch. Kieth tried numerous resuscitate the creature and even tried splashing water on him. After about 30 minutes, nothing worked, and it seemed Charles had finally gone to meet his maker. Kieth then proceeded to take the cage (along with Charles) out to the dumpster to in front of the house and they parted ways. Later that evening, I wrapped up my 6-8pm class and was walking back to the AGO house. As I was rounding the corner, I heard an oh-my-goodness from near the dumpsters. I walked over to check it out, and I see one of the neighbors from the sorority next to us gaping into the dumpster. Apparently she had heard some squeaking from the dumpster when she tossed out her garbage and decided to look inside. I walked over and peered inside: there was Charles, in his cage, jogging on his squeaky hamster wheel as if nothing had happened.

While Keith swears Charles came back to life, a lot of us were a bit more skeptical. Whatever kept Charles alive, we will never know, but we sure were glad he was able to be with us for another year.