So, I guess I start with Thursday afternoon. Hailey came home from school and went up to her room. Ethan and I were downstairs talking and we hear Hailey scream at the top of her lungs. We both ran up the stairs to see Hailey holding her hamster, who was obviously very sick. The hamster really wasn't moving, and barely looked alive. Hailey held it and wouldn't let go. I tried to do what I could for the hamster, but nothing was working. We wrapped the hamster up in a sock and in a towel to keep it warm. Every once in a while the hamster would move and Hailey would get all excited thinking it was getting better. Well, we needed to leave to go to my niece's birthday party, so we left the hamster all wrapped up on Hailey's bed, intending on dealing with it when we came home.
Fast forward 4 hours...
We got home from the party to see that the hamster had somehow wiggled off the bed. I felt horrible - I had no idea the hamster would move that much. I literally thought it would be long gone by the time we got home. Well, we started working with the hamster again hoping to revive it. Ethan ran over to the computer and googled "what to do with a sick hamster." We read about the symptoms and it seemed like it had hamster diarrhea. So, trying to do everything I could, we ran to Petsmart at 8:45pm. The website also said to try giving the hamster pedialyte. So, we stopped into Rite Aid on the way home. Here I am at 9:00 at night trying to give this poor dying hamster drops of medicine. Well, she seemed to come a little more to life, but then she got really bad. I started to actually hope she would just die so she would stop convulsing. At this point, I just took the hamster and said I would watch over it during the night. I didn't want Hailey seeing this poor thing suffer.
As the kids were getting ready for bed, I called JR and gave him the update on the sick hamster. I told him how we were trying to revive the poor thing. He then tells me he had already bought another hamster. What a guy! Well, he ended up coming home about 1/2 hour later with a new hamster for Hailey. Come to find out, he bought one, and the thing chewed through it's box and got lost in JR's car so he had to buy another one.
Here comes the "funny" part... We searched and searched for that hamster but couldn't find it. JR felt it crawl up his leg while he was driving. We figured it had going into the engine or just fallen out onto the ground. We thought that until my niece went to sit in the passenger seat today and pulled the seat belt out. That stupid hamster had somehow found a way to get over there and chew a hole completely through the seat belt. The seat belt was now in two pieces. What the heck? How can a small hamster actually chew through a seat belt? Well, we had to get the thing out of our car. We didn't want him chewing through the seat or anything. So, my niece's fiance works at Goodyear so we took it over there today. Needless to say, they all got a laugh out of this. Not everyday that someone comes in asking for them to find a hamster loose inside the frame of a car.
They completely took the front dash off but couldn't find the hamster. They could see where he had chewed some foam and the seat belt, but there was no sign of the critter. So, now what? We have no idea what to do. We are pretty sure the thing dies because there is a stench in the car. But, seriously, how the heck do we find the thing and then how do we get it out? We can't even being to figure out where to start. Any ideas??
What a stupid thing to have happen! Makes for a funny story though...
