I had a bit of a fright yesterday.
It actually started the night before when Warren and I
were discussing the need to check on Mikey's chinchillas.
You see Mikey has moved out and into an apartment
with some friends from work.
What this means is that he left the chinchillas here while he
worked to find a home for them.
Well, it turns out that they had a bigger piece of his heart
than he had realized and rather than give them to
either of the two interested people he attempted to work it
out so that he could take them with him.
That hadn't happened yet.
He needed a special cage and for that he needed money.
I have to say that he has been very faithful to come back
and play with the critters, feed and water them and
generally take very excellent care even from a distance.
However,
yesterday it had been a few days and I was a bit
uncertain of what I would find upon entering his room.
You see,
these two are amazing escape artists.
They have gotten out so many times that I kind of
figured they would be on the loose and
I would have to figure out a way to get them back.
Well, that or dead.
I don't have any idea how long chinchillas
can go without food and water.
It hadn't been that long but I just didn't want
to be the one that found them if the worst case happened.
I gingerly opened the door.
No scampering within the cage.
They always come to greet you.
This wasn't good.
I walked over and peeked into their favorite
sleeping spots.
Nope!
Now my heart is beating faster and I turn to peruse the room.
When Mikey left he didn't take a whole pile of blankets
and comforters.
They remain in a pile on the floor.
I figured if I was a chinchilla maybe I would have burrowed
into that pile.
So, I carefully lifted them up.
No chinchillas.
Then my eyes rested on something that
totally freaked me out.
There was a round hole in the wall down
by the baseboard.
It was big enough for chinchillas.
Then I remembered that one of the dogs
had gone spastic barking at nothing just a little
earlier. Of course we were upstairs when that
happened but I was now picturing two curious
and hungry chinchillas parading through our walls.
Left to their own devices
Chinchillas are quite destructive
so I had this image
in my head of them chewing every wire they came across
and then dying in the walls and smelling up the house.
Poor Mikey.
He was going to be devastated.
Sometime at about this point in my panic
I noticed that what had been blocking the cage door
shut was completely gone and the door was
hanging wide open.
Wait a minute.
Could it be?
Maybe Mikey came and took them.
But when?
Surely if he had been here I would have known.
I checked the window.
It was locked.
He didn't pull that old climb in and out the window trick.
I hadn't seen him all day.
How could this be?
So I called Warren and asked him to find Mikey at work.
I had to know.
(Isn't it convenient that all of the
kids work "with" Warren?)
Sure enough.
Mikey had moved his chinchillas to his new home
and they were happy as could be.
All of this had happened the night before while
Warren and I were practicing music with Pastor Mike.
Before we returned home Mom had picked up
Jonathan for his overnight shift.
Jonathan was the only one in our house who knew
that Mikey had taken the chinchillas and by the time he
got home from work yesterday morning it didn't occur to
him that I might want to know that piece of information
so he just went to bed without mentioning it.
Now,
I know this is a big long story about "nothing".
Except that it isn't.
You see,
If I hadn't been dreading what I was afraid I would
find in that room I would have been a lot more logical.
As Michael told Warren,
he had taken the food bowl,
the water dispenser and their wheel.
It was perfectly empty in the cage.
They would not have pulled all of those things into
the wall to start their own little city.
But because I had dread of a worst case scenario
my mind created one.
From now on this will be a reminder to me
to stay positive.
You tend to see what you expect to see.
Although in my defense I could have imagined
happy, full tummied chinchillas in there
and that wouldn't have been the case either.
lol
I wonder how long it will take me
to take over that room........
now that they are gone!
