The Pied Piper of Hamsters

Fluttershy hoped Rarity was having a good time with the hamsters. While she scrubbed and cleaned and disinfected, she decided that she would talk to Rarity about the band. Maybe Rarity would help her explain to the other girls why she couldn’t be in it. When she had finally wiped dry the last maze in the habitat, she put her cleaning supplies away, grabbed her backpack, and opened the door to the next room to bring back the hamsters.

But she was not prepared for what she saw. Not at all! Whizzing balls of fur were shooting in all directions. It was chaos! Total chaos! In the midst of it was Rarity, her hair tousled and covered in little bits of cloth. She looked as crazed as the hamsters.

“Rarity, what happened?!” asked Fluttershy, alarmed. She quickly shut the door behind her to make sure nobody escaped.

Rarity was completely overwhelmed. She pointed at one particularly fat little hamster who had a tattered ribbon dangling from his neck. “Well, Carl Pettington’s coat just begged to be accessorized, but Emilia Furhart refused to be left out.” She pointed at still another hamster with a circle of cloth stuck to the top of her head. “And she got Curtis Pawpower and Mayfield Bumblepuss to chew right through Carl’s little scarf, and before I knew it, I had a Habitat-wide feud on my hands.” With an exhausted exhale, she collapsed on the floor, and hamsters crowded onto her lap.

Fluttershy was confused. Carl Pettington? Curtis Pawpower?

“Also, I named them,” said Rarity, trying to smile.

Fluttershy clapped her hands authoritatively. “Ladies and gentle-hamsters, please!”

At the sound of Fluttershy’s voice, all the hamsters became absolutely still and looked up at her.

“Now, I know you are all upset,” she began. There was a cascade of chattering. “Shh,” soothed Fluttershy. “Why don’t we head back over to the Habitat and talk it all out?”

The hamster with the torn ribbon around his neck staggered over to Rarity, and she instantly picked him up, cradling him in her hands. She slicked back the fur on the top of his head. “I mean, honestly,” she cooed at him. “Not every hamster can expect to look as smart in a scarf as Carl here.”

Carl Pettington’s furry white chest puffed out with pride. Then he stuck out his tongue at the other hamsters. Immediately they all set to squabbling again. They chittered! They bickered! They bit!

“Stop that!” ordered Fluttershy, but they weren’t listening to her anymore. She shook her head and scolded Rarity. “That wasn’t exactly helpful. How are we ever going to get them back into their Habitat?”

Rarity found a tiny little hamster-sized dress she had made and held it up. A hamster lifted its head curiously. Slowly, Rarity led the hamster to the door, opened it, and started walking toward the Habitat. The hamster crawled over to the dress, sniffed it, turned up its nose, and ran off to join the other hamsters.

“Well!” said Rarity, disappointed. It wasn’t often that someone, even a hamster, turned down one of her stylish creations.

Meanwhile, Fluttershy had carefully created a trail of food pellets across the room. But the hamsters weren’t even eating them. They were picking them up and pelting one another with them. It was nuts. They were out of their minds!

Fluttershy went and grabbed her backpack and began searching through it for something that might help her lure the hamsters back to their Habitat. She found a can of cat food and set it aside. She pulled out some dog treats that were bigger than the hamsters themselves. She found an old tambourine from when she was little and turned it over in her hands. Maybe she could use it as a scoop and catch the hamsters one by one with it!

Rarity had taken out a bolt of cloth from her backpack and was trying to use it as a net. She threw it over a large group of hamsters, but they just scurried out from beneath it. Rarity was waving her giant piece of cloth, Fluttershy was trying to use her tambourine as a scoop, and the hamsters were evading both of them. Rarity and Fluttershy were running in circles, the hamsters were jumping over their feet, and the next thing the girls knew they had bumped into each other. Bam! Rarity threw the bolt of fabric over Fluttershy’s head, blinding her, and completely surprised, Fluttershy began shaking the tambourine wildly.

All the hamsters stopped, mesmerized.

But the moment Fluttershy took the fabric off her head, she stopped jingling the tambourine. The hamsters began fighting again. Fluttershy experimented and shook the tambourine gently. At the first tinkling of the tambourine, the hamsters were rapt, gazing up at her, silent and obedient. She shook it a little more, and they began to walk toward her. As she slowly slapped it against her leg in a steady beat, they started marching. They were hypnotized by the sound. Amazed, Fluttershy looked up at Rarity.

“Don’t stop now, dear,” begged Rarity. “You’ve found your audience!”

Fluttershy began to really play the tambourine, shaking and slapping it in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Delighted by her music’s effect, Fluttershy began to spin and dance toward the Habitat as she played. The hamsters followed in a straight line behind her.

Her music became wilder as she danced. As if by magic, a tail and ears appeared on Fluttershy. She was ponying up! She was carried away by the enchantment of it all.

Rarity followed behind, gently humming to the music.

One by one, the hamsters weaved past Fluttershy and quietly crawled back into their Habitat. Finally, when the very last hamster was inside and the door to the cage was sealed, Fluttershy dropped her tambourine and collapsed. Her tail and ears disappeared.

She was in a state of shock. It wasn’t just the effect the music had on the hamsters, but the effect it had on her. She’d actually played an instrument of her own. “But would anyone want a tambourine in a band?” She didn’t mean to say it out loud, but she did.

“That would be wonderful!” exclaimed Rarity. “All the best bands have tambourine players.”

“They do?” questioned Fluttershy.

“They do!” said Rarity.

“I’ve been worried that I didn’t have an instrument to play.…”

“But you do, darling,” reassured Rarity.

“But I’ll still have to perform in front of the whole school.…” she said nervously.

“You think that’s going to be harder than playing for this audience?” Rarity pointed at the Habitat.

“Maybe you’re right!” Fluttershy laughed. “If I get stage fright, I’ll just imagine everyone is a hamster!”

Rarity was looking through one of the transparent tubes at Carl, who had managed to remove his scarf at last. “I never would have guessed hamsters would be so touchy about fashion,” she sighed. “I guess there is such a thing as too fabulous.”

“Not for the Equestria Girls!” said Fluttershy. “I can’t wait to see the outfits you are going to create for our band!” She was so excited now, excited and relieved. What a great day it had turned out to be despite Rarity’s hamster catastrophe.

“You know I’ve actually had fashion shows go worse than this,” Rarity confided to Fluttershy as they headed out the door of the Animal Rescue Center. “As models go, hamsters are pretty low maintenance.”