Aubrey II: A Hamster on the Run

In a sort of rodent-kind of Prison Break (but without the hotness that is Wentworth Miller), Aubrey, our now notorious hamster, escaped last week. Liam was playing with him in his room. It was 18h45. I was tired and not in the mood for micro-management.

5 4 3 2 1....

"Mooooo-ooooo--oommm".
Here we go.
"Aubrey runned away."

Now don't get me wrong: I think Aubrey is really sweet and I like the fact that Liam is learning to (intermittently) care for something, but at 18h45, I couldn't be fucked to CSI my house looking for a fugitive fur-ball.

Needless to say, CSI we did. For over an hour.

Nothing. Aubrey was well and truly gone. By this stage, Liam had lost interest in Aubrey's safe return and was far more enamoured with the shadows he could make on the wall using the torch we were supposed to be using to check under couches for Aubrey. So I thought 'to hell with this', got Liam to bed and had visions of squashing Aubrey en-route to the bathroom in the wee small hours.

For 3 whole days, Aubrey was nowhere to be found. By now, I was starting to worry about what the poor bastard was going to do for food and water, so I started to populate our home with plastic bowls of water and that synthetically-coloured birdseed that hamsters eat.

And then it happened: in the middle of the night, I went to check on the kids, one of whom was talking in his sleep. There, in the passage, was the little green plastic bowl of seeds, half empty and knocked over. It seemed The Fugitive had indulged in a midnight feast.

Early the next morning, Liam woke me up.

"Mommy! Come quick! I see-ed Aubrey scoot across my room!"

Eventually, a tired, hungry and skittish Aubrey was returned to his home, where he hoovered his water and had a hamster-binge.

So what did I learn from this?

1. My husband is good at a lot of things: catching a rodent isn't one of them.
2. My friend Tammy was right: hamsters teach children about loss, just as much as they teach them about responsibility.
3. I am actually starting to love Aubrey.

The End