Pancake and Waffle (Part VI)

The traps I bought are basically finely off-balance seesaws.  Food goes in one side of a tube, and the rodent enters from the other.  When the mouse or hamster or whatever reached the food, the idea is that the weight of the critter combined with the effort to get the food causes the food end to drop, the entryway end to lift, and a one-way door gently closes, entrapping the critter.

Instead of the recommended peanut butter I just placed some hamster food in the food end and distributed the four traps around the boy’s room. 

In the morning we discovered that the food in two of the traps had been turned to crumbs and that some of the food in the food dish in the cage had been eaten… or at least pushed around a bit.  But no hamsters.  It seems that the hamsters did not weigh enough to unbalance the trap enough for the door to shut.  Super.

Before we went to school and to work we moved the traps around a bit but this time I hot-glued the food to the food end of the trap.  Maybe the extra time spent struggling there would cause the doors to close properly…  Hey, it might have worked, except that evening there was no evidence of any of the food being eaten and the food dish seemed undisturbed.

This was starting to look less and less like a “search and rescue” mission and more and more like a “recovery” mission.  Out of desperation, I resorted to the one tool I had hoped not to involve in this whole deal.

The cat.

Rocket (the cat’s name is Rocket, you see) had been sequestered from the second floor of the house since we got the hamsters.  No sense in giving the Robos tiny little cardiac arrests while we were at work.  Or downstairs.  Or just by leaving the bedroom door ajar for ten seconds. 

I opened the door to the upstairs hallway and slowly followed the cat around.  I could tell he smelled…  something… he just wasn’t sure what.  He walked into the boy’s room and sniffed around the bed a bit.  I followed him ready to grab him at a moment’s notice in case he did discover where one or both of the little guys were hiding.  After a few minutes he left the room and he sauntered down the hallway toward the master bedroom in his usual cat way.  No longer hunting.  Just out for a stroll.  I picked him up, shut the door, and brought him downstairs again.

It was a longshot, but, hey, it might have worked.

My usual routine when the wife brings the boy to karate after school is to make myself dinner, head to the media room, and fire up Netflix (dude, you gotta watch Norsemen… it’s awesome). As long as I shut the doors to the media room it’s pretty relaxing.  The cat just stares at me through the glass and pouts quietly. 

This time, though, my peripheral vision caught a brownish-white fuzzball arcing majestically through the air on the other side of the French doors.  Sometime during the show Rocket had found his new buddy (maybe in the laundry room?) and was teaching how him to play “Grievous Bodily Harm: The Home Game”.  I dashed out of the room just in time to catch the hamster in mid-tumble down the stairs.

He wasn’t moving as I held him in my hand and gently lowered him down into his cage.  After a few moments he started stirring around a bit… slowly at first then with more and more confidence.  I could tell he was injured but he ate a bit, climbed up the tube to the second deck and got on the treadmill.  After a few desultory rotations he climbed off and went back downstairs to the food dish.  I placed the cage inside an open cardboard box and I passed the news on to the wife and boy that one of the hamsters had been found. 

When they came home, I filled them in on what had happened.  They were happy to see him back in the cage but we could all tell that he was moving far more cautiously than normal. 

Sadly, Waffle did not make it through the night.  Pancake was still MIA.