Yesterday morning, I woke up and came into the office to say good morning to Abe and Willa. To my shock, Abe's cage door was open and Abe was nowhere to be found. I absolutely could not believe it. I knew I had closed his door firmly. How could he have escaped?
Leo was sure I just hadn't closed the cage, but I knew I had, so I took to the internet to find answers. It wasn't long before I found around ten YouTube videos of hamsters escaping from the very CritterTrail where Abe lives. Here are some of them:
So it's a thing, this escaping hamster bit, and more than that, it's something that happens regularly with that cage!!! Obviously, they should sell a lock with the cage.
Abe was missing and possibly hurt (his cage usually sits about four feet off the ground, so I'm pretty sure he fell), and the only clue I had was a dropping near the bookcase where his cage sits. And worse, I didn't even know what room he was in. Much of our house has doors with two-inch gaps at the bottom, because the house used to be carpeted pretty much everywhere, and the bottoms of the doors were cut high to accommodate the carpet. I replaced the carpet with hardwood and now there's a gap, which isn't a problem most of the time, but obviously, that gives a wide berth for a curious hamster, so I was afraid Abe had left the office, which left at least seven possible rooms he could've gotten into, on the second floor alone.
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| Have You Seen This Hamster? |
I read on several different "How to find a lost hamster" web sites (and there are tons of these sites, so you know it happens all the time) that you should put out some food and water and sprinkle flour around the food and water so the hamster makes a trail wherever he goes. I figured that was a good bet, since Abe has kind of a "hair skirt" now, what with his development into a longhaired hamster.
I sprinkled flour everywhere, sitting on my floor like a coke addict, using two Business in Blue Jeans business cards to create tidy lines of flour in front of doors and around piles of food and water in virtually every room on the second floor.
And as of this morning, Abe is still missing. None of the flour was disturbed and none of the food was eaten. However, there was a dropping just outside the pile of food just outside Abe's cage (duh, why did I put one there anyway?!) and some bedding next to it, so I think Abe ignored the snacks and went for the food and water he knows in his cage. Duh. At least I have some indication that he's alive.
I emptied the bookcase next to Abe's cage and had Leo pull it out to see if Abe was behind or under it, but Abe wasn't there. I'm pretty sure he's still in the office, so I'm ready to move to Phase Two of Operation: Abe, which involves a bucket with peanut butter and snacks in the bottom and a wooden plank (or books) as a ramp so the hamster can get to the yum-yums. Hopefully, we'll catch Abe and get him back to his home and I can stop freaking out with worry and missing him.
In the meantime, Willa's still mothering the babies, they are starting to look less creepy, and the pet store confirmed they'll take the babies, so I have no worries there. Whew.
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