After my parents divorced we moved with my Mother from Bedford Stuyvesant part of Brooklyn to Flatbush. There I met my 2 new best friends, Jack Kaminsky and Alan Leavitt. I knew we would be lifelong friends because they were both nerdier than me.
One of our great joys was building Estes Rockets which are illegal to launch in New York City. But we’d do it any way in Prospect Park because there were many baseball fields separated by trees so if the police came after us we could usually get away.
Estees rockets are made of plastic, balsa wood and cardboard and are reusable rockets. They launch electronically on a specialized launching pad. The rockets would fire and go up a couple of thousand feet and a parachute would pop open and return the entire rocket safely back to planet earth.
Estes had one rocket that had a clear plastic tube for payloads. They suggested putting insects in the payload section and seeing if there was any reaction to the rocket ride. Kind of an educational laboratory.
It took several weeks to build the rocket and get it ready for launch. Finally the day came and my friends, Jack and Al rang my door bell at 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning and said its time to go launch our rockets. As we were walking out the door Jack asked if I had any insects to put in the payload section of my rocket. I replied NO. Jack looked at the hamster cage and said, “Rodney will fit in the payload section.” Whereupon I immediately grabbed my younger brother, Jay’s pet hamster, Rodney and put him in my pocket.
When we got to Prospect Park Rodney was very nervous. He knew something was up. Jack fired his rocket off first. Then Al. Then I loaded Rodney into the clear plastic payload section of the rocket and gently placed the rocket with the worlds first Hampsternaut on the launch pad and proceeded with the count down.
4, 3, 2, 1 LAUNCH! The rocket shot well over a thousand feet up into the air and the parachute opened up and returned Rodney safely to earth.
We recovered the rocket and the observation that we made was Hamsternaut Rodney was still alive, however when we launched Rodney there was just Rodney in the payload section. Upon retrieval we observed that Rodney had less room in the payload section due to an abundance of Hamster poop pellets.
We took Rodney home before anyone else in my apartment woke up. My brother Jay never knew that his hamster had an adventure.
The only one who suspected anything was my Mother. She observed that whenever I went near Rodney’s cage he would burrow in a crazed frantic state until I moved away from his cage.