I went into Hayley’s room to get her some clothes and I noticed that the lid for the rat tank (which had already cracked ages ago) had collapsed completely and fallen into the tank. Annoying. Except then I noticed that only one rat was sleeping in there. The other was gone. Oy.

Only panicking a little, I didn’t say a word to Hayley and convinced her to go get dressed in the living room while watching Treehouse. I put Breanna in the stroller in the room with me and began my search. I figured Nicodemus is a bit of a doofus animal but he’s smart enough to know that for his entire life, his food has always been brought to him and so he wouldn’t be likely to leave. If he had escaped into the rest of the apartment, it would have been a nightmare.

I looked under both dressers and under the crib to no avail but then spotted his twitching whiskers hiding behind a few little stuffed animals. I tried to catch him but he ran further back. I ran to the kitchen and got a few pieces of chicken and used that to lure him out. Once he came out a bit further, I grabbed him and although he squeaked loudly, he didn’t struggle and I think he was relieved to find himself back in his tank. As I constructed a temporary lid out of cardboard and a piece of wood, I saw Mozart frantically giving him a bath; getting rid of the human germs, I presume.

Whew. I lost a hamster once and found him under my sister’s bed, eating a piece of fluff. I also lost a very unfriendly bite-your-face-off gecko years ago, only to find her a week later, clinging to the inside of the coat cupboard door; I screamed, she ran into the closet, and luckily my sister’s ex was there and managed to catch her and take her home with him.

I was just worried that this rescue mission would not end as well. I wasn’t scared of the idea of a rat wandering around since it’s not like he’s a sewer rat full of disease. Still, even though our cat is a total moron, I was worried she’s find the rat first. I was also worried that dehydration would kill him before I found him and I would end up finding a rat carcass somewhere in a couple of months – eww.

I think that whole ordeal woke me up even more than my coffee did.