The Great Adventures of AWOL, Mission Four

This is a true story about hunting for my eight year old son's hamster, AWOL.

AWOL broke out of her cage and has been on her mission for 24 hours now...

Throwing the clothes in the dryer is an every day affair, hamster on the loose or not. I did shake all the clothes out before tossing them in the washer. My first thought when I went to turn on the dryer was...hit the button, my second thought was...no, abort, don't hit the button…my third thought was "what is that thumping noise? OMG, I've done her in." I emptied the dryer pushed the button again. Not sounding good at all. It was making the same sound as the hamster wheel with food in it, only with a little thump and rattle with every round. "OH! So that's how it ends!!" I thought. Good job Mom!!! I think I gave up hope there, proceeding to take the dryer apart just to see what I could to see.

My car was parked outside at that time and the garage had been sealed off. (Almost used the yellow crime tape) Diego and I got home late, quietly entered the garage, and looked around while listening for no less than an hour. Frustrated and gloomy, we trudged upstairs to push on through four pages of homework, front and back. Once that was out of the way Diego got ready for bed. I said, I'll go check again to see if I can surprise her. (With no internal hope at all)

WHO-HA! There she was, cute nose and whiskers a twitching as we both froze and locked eyes for less than a split second. Then like lightening, she shot across the floor darting under the dryer. I used a stick to scare her out from underneath, blocked her in the corner and called for Diego. He ran down the stairs and coeced her in my direction. On my second attempt, muttering under my breath, I scooped her up, tossed her into her cage, and snapped the door shut with a rush of satisfaction and a high five. OH YEAH! LOCK DOWN BABY!

Report on AWOL'S 4th secret mission: Project Spider Web. Intent: to cause a complete upheaval in the garage---Mission accomplished. To put things in order will no doubt take me countless hours. That will take place only after I have rousted out all the eight legged tenants, big and little. Then I’ll I be able to put my dryer back together, which, BTW, includes reassembling the lint vent that leads outside. The only casualties on this mission were spiders. I'm sure Miss Houdini is comfortably spinning on her wheel as I write this.  (Or is she?) Her new code name while on missions is Bratty Rat. A Robo hamster...What the *!#> was I thinking!

As I started to put laundry away Diego lay back waiting to be tucked in. He commented on cruelty while reading about an animal that wears a shock collar. This sparked my comment... "Hey, maybe we can get one of those for AWOL". His immediate response was "Hell no!" I said "DID YOU just say Hell no?" He said "Yeah!" We laughed so hard, after which I said..."Honey, the thing about swearing is you have to know where, when and around who you can use words like that. I'm okay with that one since I deserved it, and we have had one heck of a day. But none of that in school, around your class mates, and older people, except Grandma of course. Why? Cuz she wrote the book on cursing!"

AWOL the task brat