The Great Degu Escape of 2010

So last night, my hubs was attempting to be a good li'l doobie and was cleaning out the degu cage. You remember my degus, yes? The little divas that they are ...

They are of the rodent persuasion.

Yeah ... he had taken the top 'cage part' off the base and sat it down on the kitchen floor. This enabled him to clean the bottom without letting the little darlings out. All was working out well ... see normally, the 'ladies' get some time to run around free in what is now referred to as "the degu room" - it is one of the unused bedrooms upstairs. That was until one of them got hurt and since then, they have not been out. A situation, it would seem, with which they have taken umbrage.

All was going as planned and the cage bottom was upside down in the kitchen sink - air drying ... when bedtime reared its ugly head. The girls needed to be put to bed and, in a hurry to do so, hubs neglected to put the bottom back on the cage. Something I'm certain he thought would be fine - as it was sitting firmly on the floor ... and it is a really big and heavy cage.

While upstairs fighting with my children to (please, FOR THE LOVE OF BOB!!!) go to sleep, I heard my dog downstairs, bouncing around like a Mexican jumping bean. I took notice (mainly because it was impeding my ability to knock my kids out, thus pissing me severely off) but figured he was just torturing Mom's cat. Roughly ten minutes later, I went down to have a look at what was going on. Cooper was nowhere to be found and (O-M- FARKITY-G!!!) the cage was empty! It seems my little Houdini's had pried the corners apart and escaped. DRAT! 

I may have mentioned before that the house we are living in currently is big? Well ... when looking for three very fast, very small and very shack happy rodents, the size of that place is a few miles past daunting. You know, I think I came up with a few new swear words last night. The little booger-naughts were AWOL! GONZO! FLEW DA COOP! GONE GONE GONE-BIN GONE SO LONG... argh.

THREE HOURS! An hour per critter! That is how long it took us to trap the little shits. We got two of them trapped in the living room by closing it off, but catching them wasn't exactly easy - even once narrowed to one room, they are like greased lightning. Holy frickin' crap, people! I was stressed. I wound up collapsing into bed around 1:00 am with visions of degus dancing in my head.

Note to self ... Never ... nevernevernevernever lose the degus in the house again - K? HUBS?!!