Pancake and Waffle (Part V)

“What do you mean ‘They’re gone’?”, I said, upon receiving the report that the morning feeding didn’t go as expected.

I got up, inspected the cage thoroughly and determined that Pancake and Waffle had indeed somehow freed themselves from the “cage that was totally ok perfectly fine 100% super awesome for dwarf hamsters”. 

As I stared at the abandoned critter prison a quote from a book I read a while back came to mind: “You see I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”

I mulled this over for a bit.  “Freedom” in this instance included the freedom to be seriously injured from a fall off the desk, the freedom to starve to death in a remote corner of the house, the freedom to discover that the question “Who’s a good kitty?” is hugely rhetorical…

 After a bit I realized my wife and son were staring at me in that hopeful, expectant way that those of us who have earned their “Dad Merit Badge” immediately recognize.  “Please make this not be happening,” their looks said.  And, like all dads everywhere I did not say “Well, what the [insert expletive here] do you expect me to do about it?  Whip out my trusty ol’ Cosmic CTRL-Z Button and magically poof them back into there?  Then what?  Call my boss and say I need to blow off that client meeting and take a personal day to escape-proof a [insert similar expletive here] hamster cage? Cuz that would go over well…”

Instead… Ok… Suppressing mentally exhausted sigh… Glancing around the room… Placing arms akimbo in expected heroic-dad fashion… Engaging upbeat tone of voice… Aaannnnnd “ACTION!”

“Ok, here’s what we are going to do.  We are going to put the cage on the floor with the door ramp wide open.  Re-attach the wheel to the side of the cage, make sure the food dish is full, and make sure the water bottle is accessible.  After work, I will get some of those humane mouse traps that don’t hurt or poison mice.   They shouldn’t have gone very far.”

No one questioned the lack of promise of a happy ending.  No one questioned the difference between “immediate action” and “clear progress toward a goal”.  No one considered the phrase “They shouldn’t have gone very far” was worded with absolute precision and did not mean “They couldn’t have gotten very far”.

Hopeful smiles all around. This was the right answer. 

After work I went to the PetSmart where we bought the hamsters and their “cage”.  I told the manager what had happened, and she just stared at me for a bit.  What she did not say was “Well, what the [insert expletive here] do you expect me to do about it?  Whip out my trusty ol’ Cosmic CTRL-Z Button and magically poof them back into there?” 

My goal in going there was that, since these people have probably heard the “my small creature is lost” thing about a billion times, they probably have a way of catching them safely.  I have never worked at a pet store but it is not out of the realm of my imagination that somewhere, sometime, some lizards or mice or hamsters maybe got dropped by a salesperson or a skittish customer, ran behind a six-foot high pallet of Chihuahua Num Nums or whatever and had to be extricated somehow.  Maybe they had some sort of fast-acting bait/pheromone/vacuum cleaner attachment or something.  I dunno.  Something…

I want to make this bit perfectly clear.  My goal going in there was NOT any of the following:

• To request a refund
• To demand a refund
•  To threaten them with a bad review on social media
• To threaten them with a $200,000 lawsuit because of the unbearable trauma our family has suffered (this is 2020, after all…)
• To see the salesclerks immediately rend their garments, don black armbands, lower the store’s flag to half-mast, organize a candle-light vigil, and rename Aisle Six to the “Pancake and Waffle Memorial Aisle of Cage Fluff and Hamster Treats”

I just wanted to see if they had humane small critter traps.  They did not.  I mean, wow!  Talk about a missed opportunity!  They could even price them on a sliding scale directly proportional to how distraught the customer’s children were!  Pfft!  That’s just leaving money on the table in my opinion, but there you go.

So, with the misguided hopefulness of a three-year-old trying to communicate effectively with a Chucky Cheese animatronic, I gave the cage make and model to the manager in case the store wanted to have the info and re-assess their previous claim that it was suitable for Robos so other people don’t lose their pets in the future.  

She just nodded at me. Or at least toward me... 

Ok, then…

I went to another pet store and a Home Depot before finally finding what I needed at a local Lowes.  I bought four of the traps and returned home to begin Operation I Sure Hope This Works.

(To be Continued...)