Funny story..

[rockdogz]

Hah, funny story that I had to share...

My kids have hamsters as pets, and my older daughter's died a while back from wet tail and so she adopted another. Well, sometimes the little buggers escape - either because the cage or ball they're in yields to the four-legged creature, or because the kids aren't too careful (still learning the responsibility of pet ownership...) and leave the door to their cage open.

The latter happened to my older daughter last Monday, and the hamster escaped. Usually we will find them after a search of the house, but once before one of them had crawled up under the toe-kick of one of the cabinets in the hallway. We can't get to them there, so we just leave out the cage overnight and they will come out to get food/water. This time however, the little thing didn't come out. We were awakened at about 2AM that night, and heard some scratching/chewing noises coming from our bathroom. Somehow she had crawled under the floor and was under our shower somewhere, and there was no way to get to her.

A couple nights went by without any more noises and we figured that she was trapped somewhere, and after a while we would smell that stench that meant the worst was confirmed...
My daughter was in the process of adopting a cute teddy bear hamster from a kid down the street, and that helped to calm her somewhat, although she was pretty upset about losing her second little one.

Fast forward to Saturday night - we had some friends over and were watching a movie downstairs, while the kids played upstairs. We had to stop the movie a couple of times because we thought we heard something... Yep, we definitely heard some scratching behind the fireplace! We stop the movie and investigate. My wife and I are incredulous that the little thing is not only still alive, but has been able to crawl down the wall somehow and survive!

The fireplace seems to have some ceramic tiles in place, so we move them out and are met by a metal enclosure, and since there is tile around the front of the fireplace, it will be an expensive and messy demo if we try to rip it out.

The fireplace backs up to the garage, so we carefully measure the distance from the wall on one side, then go into the garage and cut a hole out of the drywall/plywood where we think it should be. I'm nervous cutting, because I don't figure there's much room in the wall and I don't want to drill or cut the hamster in half!

I open up a little hole, and shine a light inside - damn if it wasn't that hamster! We throw some cilantro inside because that's what we had on hand just to keep her interested, and end up sliding an empty wrapping paper tube in there and she crawls up it and we pull her out! She is hungry and thirsty but appears to be ok!

Wow, we just couldn't believe that she was still alive and that we were able to rescue her... I've since closed up all the holes I can find in the cabinets and the kids say they're going to be more careful... Now I gotta learn drywall patching I guess!