I just spoke to a friend of mine who is a nurse at a big emergency hospital.  She was working this evening and received the strangest phone call.  A woman called to say

"I'm not really sure what to do.  My hamster has just laid an egg!"

Unfortunately before my friend could really question this, the lady said that she would call back later and hung up.

She's pretty sure it wasn't someone playing silly b#ggers (we're all terribly professional and would never contemplate that sort of thing ;-) ).

The only half plausible theory I have is the hamster has suffered a rectal prolapse.  If anyone has any theories I'd like to hear them.

M-C

I worked on an answering service for many different companies.  One of our regulars was a lady called Yasmine.  She would phone in and say strange things such as one evening she was crying that she couldn't find her father.  She kept calling back saying she had looked everywhere but couldn't find him and then confided that he had been dead for three years!  She was a lovely lady but obviously needed care.  The last few times I spoke to her she was ringing from a call box in a psychiatric ward, again crying but on these occasions she was crying to go home.  Very sad.

Well I guess a newborn pinky hamster could look like an egg to some people (with bad eyesight??) as they are so unfinished??

Could be right with the baby hamster theory.

  If the number they rang is a freefone number there is a good chance it is someone mucking about.

We used to get comedians ringing the funeral service - one evening they sang "ooh ooh ooh ooh, staying alive, staying alive"  emergency lift phones were favourite, usually with kids. Another freefone favourite with kids was Save the Children "save me save me"  you had to assume every time that the call was real until you were sure it wasn't.