We went to the inspection for our almost-ours New House™ today.

Something was nagging at the back of my mind as I looked at the yard. Then, it struck me: a family lives there now with two kids. And you know what that means:

Hamster-bodies in the soil.

It's not even that big of a yard, I figure maybe a fifty hamster-body yard, if you figure that burying a hamster is going to take about one square foot, and allowing for a couple of feet "elbow room"* on each side of your departed chum, in case he gets restless. And of course, you don't want to be burying Fluffy Mark VI and dig up Fluffy Mark II right in front of your recently bereaved progeny, do you? So I figure each hamster-body will need about 3 square feet of ground.

This handy equation should help anyone who is contemplating moving into the real estate market:

x = (y/3)³ * z

where x = total number of hamster-bodies likely in yard
y = total area of yard in feet
z = number of kids

This equation will be helpful to you in determining the likelihood of disturbing a hamster-body's eternal slumber, thus angering the hamster-body legions, and potentially causing a Hamster Vampyr uprising of truly epic proportions.



*The question of whether or not hamsters have elbows** has been debated for many years in the Irresponsible Scientist Community, and while debate has been at times exciting, no conclusion has truly been reached.***

**One thing is for certain: hamsters have just needlessly huge testicles.

*** I stand by my assertion, however, that dogs do not have knees.