Didn't You Ever Consider the Hamster's Feelings?

A court in the UK today fined two Cambridge students for sending a hamster through the mail as a prank. From The Guardian:

David Jordan and James Cole, both 19 and second year students at Churchill College, claimed to have undertaken the bizarre prank in revenge upon a man who had threatened Jordan four months earlier.

Magistrates sitting in Ely, Cambs, heard that the pair carried out the cruel practical joke after getting "plastered" at a college garden party.

Jordan and Cole both admitted abandoning a hamster in circumstances likely to cause the animal unnecessary suffering, when they appeared before magistrates today.

Jordan was fined £750 and ordered to pay £100 towards costs. He was banned from keeping animals for the next 10 years.

Cole was fined £500 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £100. He was also banned from keeping animals for the 10 years.

I support punishing persons who are cruel to animals. But, frankly, that hamster's brush with the post office will undoubtedly be the most exciting episode of its inevitably short, domestic life.