You’re going to cook the little bastard?
Sick and hard core Joe!!! I love it! 
I really think that you should cough up and get the job done professionally. You took on a responsibly when you brought the pet into your home, and IMO it is your duty to ensure that the animal has a comfortable and happy life (and death).
Sorry if that comes across as cold, but I don’t understand why people get pets if they are not financially and emotionally committed to taking care of them.
I did. I called two other places and both came in at around $120. So all three vet places I checked with all had the same answer. ~$60 for an examination and ~$60 for the procedure. The 4th vet I called said they don’t deal with pocket pets.
Mangetout It seems to me 30 seconds (if it is even that long), is a whole lot less suffering than hours, if not days, of a slow death by whatever is plaguing this hamster.
Why not just feed it some rat poison, so it dies in its cage, and your kid then just assumes it died naturally?
How long does it take an animal to die from rat poison?
I dispatch terminally-ill poultry or newborn goat kids with birth defects with a newly-sharpened hatchet to the back of the neck, animal’s neck is laid on a large heavy wooden block. It is INSTANT. Plus, no extra expense and bother.
I no longer keep rodents but it would work fine for them too. If your guy is too wriggly for this technique, he’s not sick enough.
It is mighty disturbing though when the separated head makes gasping for breath motions and the body makes running motions for a while after the chop. Not to mention the remarkable mess. Definitely something to do outside if you do it.
Well…maybe not what you’re looking for:
Seems a bit broad, don’t you think?
30 seconds is less than several days, sure, but methods have been proposed here that don’t impose any additional suffering at all. Why subject the poor thing to 30 seconds of panicked agony when you can instead send it off into blissful, permanent unconsciousness?
Chickens can do this sometimes, but they aren’t feeling any pain. I find killing things to be an outdoor job in general, blood is so difficult to get off fabrics and the stains may be misconstrued, with is such a bother. With diseased fowl I dig a hole first so it is just chop and plop. It is unpleasant, period.
What if he’d found an injured rat in his yard? Would he still be morally obligated to have it euthanized for the ridiculous sum of $120? Do you believe the hamster has some awareness of the OPs duty toward his (the hamster’s) happiness? If not, than what makes this situation different?
A trip to the vet and ensuing exam and injection would likely cause more stress to the animal than a quick beheading at home.
I vote shovel.
Mind boggling that there are over 70 posts on this (including my own of course).
I’m a pretty sensitive guy, but it’s a hamster for God’s sake. Take a shovel to him and be done with it. Will take about 3 seconds.
It’s a big bad world out there. If you really have $60 to $120 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, give it to a homeless shelter or food to the hungry, reach down count to two, and take a shovel to the rodent and be done with it.
Gruesome deaths like this can be perfectly painless, but in this case, the OP has indicated that his (her?) kid is involved and so one requirement is to leave a good-looking corpse. A shovel/hammer/guillotine will not meet this requirement.
Might not be an option in the US due to the fact it is controlled, but I wonder how much codeine it would take to kill a animal the size of a hampster? It comes in sweet cough syrups, seems like you could mix a single human dose in the water bottle and have the little guy go to sleep and never wake up.
If you really wanted to get educational and all, you could let your kid participate in the experiment of trying to kill the hamster. Using Grude’s example let him/her study the effects of codeine, weigh the hamster, come up with a hypothesis of how much cough syrup is needed to get the job done, and then commence with your experiment. The kid could document it and turn it in as science project.
Yeah, I have one in the garage between my mouse rack and rodent iron maiden. :dubious:
Wait…the money or the dead hamster?
Have you considered borrowing a cat?
Good.
But just in case you don’t, here’s one you can buy: Rodent guillotine.
A little pricey at $893, but do 100 of them, that’s less than $9 each, much more economical than the $120 the vet will charge you.
They could build a miniature coliseum and stage a gladiator fight!