Santa brought Little D some gerbils for Christmas. Bill and Ben are very gerbilly as far as gerbils go - very young and very hyper. They live in an aquarium with a lid made of wire mesh.
We came home one evening after a full day of work and then an outing to Costco (notice that we are now boycotting Sam's Club in our quest to take down their parent company, the evil retail giant Wal-Mart). As we sat enjoying our dinner, I saw a black rodenty thing scoot across the living room, under our leather chair.
I screamed, as myriad thoughts ran through my head in a split second, in this order:
1. I am not sleeping in this house until that thing is dead;
2. That thing is too big to be a mouse, yet too small to be a rat;
3. That is one of Little D's gerbils.
David ran to catch the gerbil while I went to check the aquarium. Sure enough, the lid was off. And sure enough, you could see that Bill and Ben had been loose for about twelve hours, judging by the amount of gerbil turd that was left around the house. We could have easily built a berm of the gerbil turds in the living room alone.
Bill and Ben had time to figure out the floorplan of the house, and, in fact, had fairly worn a path in the carpet between Little D's room and the living room, which seemed to be the venue of choice for turding. I am sure that if Bill and Ben had hands, they could make a very accurate scale drawing of our home, given their familiarity of our house.
Their safe haven was our laundry room. Specifically, the dryer, via the mouse-sized hole in the back of the dryer. After about an hour or more, we managed to catch both of them. David learned that gerbils are very agile and fast! He also spent a fair amount of time vacuuming up the living room!
Now that Bill and Ben have had a taste of freedom, they will always be watching for another opportunity for a Gerbil's Big Day Out.
