Dysfunctional Hamster Orchestra

When I was a kid I came across a device at some amusement park that featured a "musical chicken". Naturally, I felt that all my life's experiences to that point had just been a warmup for this, the ultimate entertainment the universe had to offer: a chicken that played the piano.

You put a quarter in and that opened a door that was supposed to allow the bird to walk over to a piano that had some ground corn dropped onto the keys. Naturally, the chicken just stood there as the door opened and looked at me with his beady little eyes as if to say: “Who’s the asshole now?” It didn’t budge, it didn’t “play the piano” and I learned a valuable lesson: Life sucks. Others might have taken some other lesson away from the experience but that was my take on it.

My idea is to expand on this concept for future generations. Instead of one chicken, have 12 hamsters in separate compartments with doors, like the starting gate of a horse race. Upon depositing a quarter, the doors open in a pre- programmed sequence letting them run down a shoot where they pick up some hamster food that’s been automatically deposited on some instrument that's struck when the hamster grabs the food. A piano key, a cymbal, a bellows that blows a flute, that sort of thing. It plays the note of the song at the right time in the sequence and a song is played. Announce on the instructions that it will play “Nearer My God to Thee” or something.

The point is, the kid will put their quarter in, the hamsters will just sit there or run away from the sound of the gates opening and closing in precise sequence, everybody will get a good laugh and the kid will get a valuable lesson in engineering, namely: Just because it looks good on paper, doesn't mean it'll work in the real world.