Barb, we had the same thing happen to us last fall with Chloe. It happened on a Sat evening, I was playing with her with a similar toy, I put the toy down to go check on dinner and within 25 sec my husband called me frantically asking me if I took the elastic off the toy because it was gone. We took her to the ER where they tried to induce vomiting. She did not vomit at the hospital, but she did vomit as soon as we got home. The elastic was chewed but not broken. It took her about a day to recover from the ordeal. We don't have anything with strings, tails, etc in the house. I cut off every bit of string etc off every toy. Yes, pls watch him carefully, if he gets sick take him in right away.