Dad's Text Messages To Daughter After He Lost Her Pet Hamster Goes Viral

A father’s text messages to her daughter after he lost her pet hamster have become viral, earning him the nickname ‘Hamster Dad.’

Daniel Veerman had agreed to take care of her daughter’s hamster, Chester, while she went back for her sophomore year at Emmanuel College in Boston and eventually grew close to it. However, on Sunday, the hamster escaped from its cage leaving the father distraught.

When daughter Stephanie Veerman received an urgent call from her dad while she was at work, she thought a family member had died.

“My dad took over my hamster once I went back to college and ended up getting really attached and today he escaped and this goes to prove how truly pure my father is,” Stephanie Verman tweeted along with screenshots of the text messages that her father sent her.

“I’m so wicked sorry I’ll keep looking all day,” Daniel Veerman texted his daughter. He told her that he won’t be able to forgive himself if the hamster doesn’t come back. He even planned to skip work in order to look for his beloved hamster.

Stephanie, who wanted to calm down her dad told him that it was not his fault that the hamster ran away.

“Dad- he’s just a hamster, I don’t blame you at all, “ she texted her dad. “You shouldn’t skip work. You are a lawyer and he is a hamster.”

However, Daniel made it a priority to find his daughter’s hamster back.

“My parents are divorced and my dad is a single dad, and he’s the opposite of you what you would think seeing him in this situation,” Stephanie told BuzzFeed News. “He’s conservative, Catholic, a lawyer, and usually strict, but when it comes to animals and babies, he has the biggest soft spot.”

Determined to find the hamster, Daniel looked up online to see how he could get Chester back. Expert Hamster searching sites suggested that he would have more luck finding the hamster at night as they were more nocturnal creatures. However, Daniel decided that he couldn’t just sit there all day and began setting traps for the hamster.

“I couldn’t just sit there all day, I was going crazy,” he told BuzzFeed News. “So I set traps. I re-created his cage in my office, took his toys and treats all around. Put out water. I thought if I didn’t find him at least he wouldn’t die because he would have food.”

He also spread peanut butter, which Chester liked, across the floor and scattered flour everywhere so that he could see the hamster’s footprints.

“Right after nightfall, I saw him run across the floor and said, 'Thank god,'” Daniel said. “I came back and saw him standing on a book, cleaning himself, and I grabbed him.”

Relieved, he texted his daughter along with a picture of Chester.

“He’s safe now. Good lord. I was a mess. This little bastard destroyed me today,” he told her.

At one point, Daniel commented that losing the hamster was as stressful as taking the bar. The exchange between father and daughter quickly became viral with 98,000 retweets and more than 397,000 likes.

“Yo if your father is as thorough in his profession as he is in finding a hamster, I might need to talk to the dude,” a user replied to her tweet.

“I’m so wicked sorry” is how I will exclusively apologise from now on,” another user said.

Some users even began sharing stories of their own experiences when their parents lost hamsters.

Now that the stressful ordeal has finished, Daniel was planning to focus on Thanksgiving. He even bought Chester his favorite treats all the way from Germany.