... that we almost lost Tina?

I am a bad parent.

In my defense, Tina 1 is kind of crazy.  She is very jumpy, extremely fast, and not afraid to dive out of your hands and plummet to the ground.

Note to potential hamster owners: dwarf hamsters are the cutest, but they are all kind of jumpy and therefore very easy to lose.  However, I have found that the Djungarian dwarf hamsters (the two that Kar and Cait gave me for my birthday) are much calmer, less afraid, and make better pets, especially for children.  This is also the type of hamster that I had as pets in my 3rd grade classroom, and the kids loved them.

Tina 1, on the other hand, is a Roborovski dwarf, and let me tell you, she is FAST.  She has gotten away from me several times, but she hasn't escaped the playroom yet (knock on wood).  She is just so stinkin jumpy, and very easily spooked, it's hard to hold on to her!

On Tuesday, we had Mira over and of course she wanted to look at the hamsters.  She LOVES them.  So I got Tina 2 and Karboochie out and put them in a little plastic bin on the ground so that Mira could watch them.  She actually wanted to read them a book, which was so adorable.  But then I took out Tina 1 and was holding her in my hands, and with so many people in the room she got spooked.  She jumped loose and started tearing around the room.  I quickly barricaded the door, thinking that we could just catch her like always.  And then I saw her running toward the closet.  I had almost grabbed her when she slipped into a thin crack between the wall and a permanent drawer on the floor of the closet:



I started freaking out.  Where did that crack lead?  Did it open into the wall?  the floor?  Was she stuck?  Would she stay in the playroom?  Could we get her out?

I was devastated.

I set up her toy log as a ladder going into a bin with food to see if we could lure her out:



And at the last minute I put her cage on the floor with the door down and extra food inside.  I was hoping she might just crawl in during the night and stay there.  We covered the heater vents in the room and blocked off any other escape routes we could see and hoped for the best.  But the next morning when I checked her cage, the food was gone and she was NOT in there!  She had climbed in, taken the food, and climbed back out.  She is so stinkin smart!  She didn't even go near the log ladder and bin trap.  But I could still hear her shuffling in the closet, so I was really hoping she was just hiding back there and couldn't get into the walls.

So I set up my next trap:

I even smeared a little peanut butter on the board and the inside of the hamper.  I left it there all day, and was so nervous to check it when I got home from work.

No dice.  It hadn't been touched.  Which didn't really surprise me because hamsters are nocturnal and I thought she would just sleep all day.  I decided to leave it there overnight, but I put some carrot bits on the board before we went to sleep just to make it extra appealing.

This morning, I ran into the room to check the trap: two carrot bits gone, no hamster.  She didn't even climb to the top of the ramp!  She is just too wary to get on anything she doesn't know.  Why does she have to be so smart?  But as I sat there in despair, I heard a very quiet rustle coming from under the bed!  I yelled for Matt to come and help me and immediately blocked off the closet.  Then I had Matt pull out the trundle bed VERY CAREFULLY as I watched for Tina 1.  I could hear her scurrying as he pulled, and eventually saw a little pile of food that she had stashed down there!  We were close!  He lifted one end of the trundle, and there she was, just a tiny furball of trouble.  But as soon as I went to grab her, she bolted toward the closet.  When she couldn't get back in, she panicked and bolted again.  After 5 minutes of chasing her under the bed and barricading more escape routes, I finally caught her!  I was so relieved!  Not only did I have her back, but I really really REALLY did not want to have to tell my in laws that there was possibly a dead hamster somewhere in the walls of their house.  Luckily, that is not the case, and Tina is safe and sound locked back in her cage.  She is definitely grounded for a few days.

But it's okay, because I love my hamsters!!!