Questions...

Question
I just got a new hamster and i noticed that it hasn't been drinking from it's water bottle yet... Is that normal? I'm not sure if maybe, it doesn't know that there's water inside or how to drink from it? Do you know what i could do?
And also, everyone says not to use pine bedding for your hamster, but I'm not sure if i have pine shavings because the packet is in a different language and.. I'm not sure what it looks like! please help!

Answer
Most hamsters will naturally find in time to lick the bottle to produce water. Just mark the water line and watch to see if it goes down. If you ever catch your ham drinking, you can tell water is coming out if you see a bubble rise every so often when they drink. Aspen bedding is the wood product of choice for hamster bedding, and the shavings of aspen and pine can look very similar, so it may be hard to tell. You can finish up the bag of pine without doing a whole lot of damage, and then switch to aspen.