At the bachelorpedia office, we once had three free-range dwarf hamsters running around. They're good at eating pests (bugs), and as long as you change their wood-shavings piles every so often, your house won't be replete with hamster shit. It’s also a good litmus test for any potential woman you might bring around: can she handle the carnage? You'll notice, too, that your parents/family will stop around less if they know you have free-range hamsters. All plusses.

When your hamster dies it's only fitting that you give it a Viking burial in the spirit of the Norse rodent god Chukfallah. First, freeze the corpse in a 1KG coffee tin 1/3 filled with water and 1/3 with wood shavings (half freshed, half used) and place in freezer. While he's freezing, rustle up a banana box, two old hockey sticks, a half-litre of fondue fluid, a lighter, some hockey tape and about six friends. Lash the sticks to either side of to the banana box using the tape and nestle the coffee tin (once everything's frozen) in the centre. Next, park three or four guys on either side of the box and carry as a coffin down to the closest urban bridge, preferably one at least 300 feet above the mud-crashing river below.

Once it's dark, you're going to want to soak that bastard in fondue fluid (highly flammable but with a low lick, which lends a blueish, durable glow to your pyre) and then you're going to want to light it as you would bananas foster. Now gently, gently, lean that fucker over the side of the bridge and release simultaneously such that it falls evenly into the crash of the angry bastard Water below and carries your fallen pal into the the low, dull City of God. You can chant while he falls but we didn't. If you've assembled this whole thing properly the sticks will act as pontoons and the banana box will give the coffee coffin heft and size against the fierce stinging jabs of Lady River.