Huffman Coding

When I was in third grade, before the advent of the horseless carriage, my teacher, Mrs. Joyce, had a guinea pig in the classroom. One weekend I had the awesome responsibility of taking care of it. It was cool.

So when Katie came home with a permission slip to take care of Furball, the classroom hamster, we said of course. We even volunteered to care for him over any extended weekend.

Well this is the first three day weekend of the school year and he is our charge. Katie, who wears her heart on her sleeve, has been counting down the days for weeks.

We set up a little pink table in their bedroom for the cage. When I came home from work, Katie reported that she put Furball in her Barbie car, but that he kept crawling out. Chris reported that Katie and Marissa had attempted to bathe him. I saw a bloody tissue on the bathroom floor later that evening. Katie had been on the receiving end of Furball’s displeasure at his almost bathtime experience.

I would have thought that would have taught the girls a lesson. It did: wear long-sleeved jackets before continuing to annoy the poor animal. Perhaps not the right lesson.

He came home in a cage with bedding, but he spent a large portion of the weekend in a clear plastic tub. It was easier to constantly grab him that way. That also meant he could no longer hide in his plastic log. The girls didn’t bother to put bedding in the tub so they we exposed to little hamster stool. It appears that this hamster poops about every 20 minutes, so Marissa would frequently have to dump the tub contents in the toilet.

Chris drives the hamster back to school Tuesday. Has this second-generation rodent-sitting experience been educational for the girls? Well, no. But the tradition continues!

A few months ago while Chris was not looking, Claire used a stool to grab the canister of fish food on top of the aquarium tank and dumped it all in. It was about a half year’s worth of food. When the aerator was done grinding up the flakes, the water was very murky and most of the fish died. To save the remaining fish, Chris spent a couple of hours vacuuming the sediment and performed many iterations of removing of most the water and replacing it with clean. A few days later, a new filter had made the water hospitable again for fish from the pet store.

Realizing that we cannot prevent Claire from getting into everything, Chris relocated the fish food about as far away as we could reasonably put it: on the top shelf of the cabinet above the microwave.

Well…

Last week on while I was not looking, Claire dragged a dinette chair across the kitchen floor, climbed onto the counter, opened the cabinet above the microwave, got the fish food, climbed down, went over to the aquarium, got a stool and dumped all the food into the tank again.

Not surprisingly, the water got murky AGAIN and most of the fish died AGAIN. Chris spend a couple of hours AGAIN cleaning the tank. Two days ago the tank was once again clean enough for six new fish (once has since died).

Chris decided to buy a smaller canister of fish food this time in case Claire decides to do it again.

If she sticks to schedule, Claire will kill the fish again sometime next spring.