Houdini

Our little Lottie Lou or La-lo, as Peanut now calls her, is something of a magician.  A while back I posted these pictures on FB.  I went to feed her one night and saw her cheeks were already really full but when I touched them they felt bumpy and funny. 

I squeezed them a little bit and saw something purple in there.  I couldn’t get her mouth open and get it out at the same time so I enlisted T to pull it out while I pried her tiny little mouth open.  This is what we fished out.

Over TWO FEET of a beaded necklace!

We couldn’t believe that she had all that in her mouth.

Her other tricks are more of the escaping variety.  She escapes at least once a week and we just set up the “rodent cam” (baby monitor) and snag her when she comes back to get food and water at night. 

She likes to roam around and she always comes back.  The longest she has been gone was four days.

A few nights ago, though, K had put her in her ball downstairs and then gone to bed.  T and I totally forgot about her and went to bed a few hours later.  Her ball seems to have a time limit.  For some reason if she is in it for more than an hour it comes open and she escapes.  I don’t know if she just rolls it into the wall enough to shake the lid loose or what, but this time the door to the laundry room was open. 

Apparently she took full advantage of that and rolled right out of the kitchen, through the laundry room and down the four steps into the breezeway where I picture her lid popping off and her crawling out with all the elation of an Alcatraz prisoner.  When I walked out into the breezeway the next morning and felt the cooler air and saw her ball open I thought for sure she was a goner.  With Herbie we learned that hamsters need to be at a steady 70 degrees and even 65 can be cold enough to kill them.  I didn’t think there was any way she could have survived but the girls and I spent 45 minutes searching the breezeway for her. 

After finding nothing I realized the only possible place she could be was in the open heater vent that leads into the house.  What a smart little rodent.  The ONLY place she could have stayed warm enough to survive was that heater vent.  We kept checking for her all day and nothing.  I finally (with little hope) put a few carrots out by the vent when the girls went to bed and when I checked later at 10:30 they were gone! 

T and I realized she was still alive and searched and searched again for her.  We didn’t find anything so we put the rodent cam up and stayed awake to see if we could spot her.  Sure enough at about 11:15 she popped up on the monitor!  We went racing in there and found…nothing!  We searched again and finally left her alone to come back out.  At 12:30 she got in her cage to get water and T was able to catch her. 

Whew.  That was a close one!  I think Peanut would have been the most sad.  All day long she was saying, “La-lo! La-lo?  Ere go? Ere go?”  We would have had some pretty devastated girls around here if she truly was lost.  Hopefully we can figure out a way to keep better track of our little Houdini!