LEVERETT – Chutes and Ladders, a golden brown hamster, poked his pink nose out through holes in the side of a cardboard pet carrier on his way out the doors of Dakin Humane Society and onto his new home.
“It’s the whiskers,” said Chutes and Ladders’ new owner Emily Conn, 20, of Amherst. “They stole my heart.”
Chutes and Ladders was adopted as part of “Super Small Saturday,” an event held at both the Leverett and Springfield branches of Dakin Humane Society where adoption fees for small animals were reduced by half.
Lee Chambers, marketing and communications director for Dakin, said the event was created because Dakin takes in particularly high numbers of animals during the summer, and both branches had a large number of small animals, which include anything that is not a dog or cat.
“We wanted to create this adoption event to give them a better chance to go home by reducing their adoption fee,” Chambers said.
Throughout the event, which took place from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Leverett branch and from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Springfield branch, adoption fees were $30 for rabbits, $12.50 for guinea pigs and $5 for hamsters. Eleven small animals were adopted in all, including Chutes and Ladders and a black and white guinea pig named Minnie from the Leverett branch. Seven of the 11 small animals were guinea pigs.
“That’s way more than we have in a typical adoption day,” Chambers said. “We’re very happy to have moved these 11 animals along and have found them homes.”
Conn and her friend Rachel Rader, 20, of Amherst, learned about the event on Facebook.
“There’s been a lot of excitement about the event on social media,” Chambers said.
“I was sharing (the event) with everybody else trying to spread the word,” Conn said.
Having just moved into her new apartment, Conn was looking for a first pet for herself and her roommates.
“I came in looking for something that was elderly or seemed unadoptable,” she said. Chutes and Ladders, at over a year old, is considered “elderly” as hamsters only live a maximum of two or three years.
“He rolled over for belly rubs and let me pet his belly,” Conn said. “I was enamored immediately.”
After looking at the two rabbits, three guinea pigs and two hamsters that Dakin’s Leverett branch offered for adoption at the start of “Super Small Saturday,” Conn said she might also come back to adopt a pair of guinea pigs.