I walk out of the bathroom the other morning about 7am to find my wife laying on her back with the look of exhaustion. Since we have been married over 15 years, the look of exhaustion in the morning coming from her is not usually a positive. So I ask, “What’s the matter.” With a disgusted look on her face, she tells me, “Smudge broke out again.” Smudge is her 1 year old chinchilla. I ask, “how did he get out this time?” She tells me, “I don’t have a clue, but he is back in his cage.” So, thinking everything is fine, yeah right, I go down stairs to make breakfast. While in the kitchen, I glance over my shoulder in time to see a gray flash move across the floor. In shock, I sneak around the corner in the den, and see Smudge hopping up and down the steps as if to say, ”look at me, you can’t catch me.” And you know what, he is right. These chinchillas are quick. Even my cats can only stalk him, but they never catch him.
So I holler up to my wife, “Smudge is out again.” The next thing I hear is, “Oh, s***.” I turn around to go finish breakfast, while Smudge takes off across the den floor like Speedy Gonzalez and darts under a chair leaving a trail behind him. And by a trial, I mean they pop like bunnys. Yeah, not a pretty picture and I am not cleaning it up.
With breakfast ready, I sit on the couch and have a decision to make. Do I watch SportsCenter or my wife on her belly, waving her arms under the couch with a rat treat in her hand, begging the rat to come to her? Well I can multi-task, so I flip on SportsCenter and watch my wife in between highlights. Finally, after about 10 minutes of, “Here Smudgy Smudgy”; the rat not being able to listen to this poor woman begging, gave in and came to her. She gathered him up, thinking she had won, and put him back in the cage. He happily hopped to his water bottle where he took a water bath that reminded me of an NFL coach getting a victory Gatorade shower. Yeah, he knew it, he was in charge.
Oh, that Smudge! He’s a slick one! Maybe you just need faster cats.