Steve,
I have decided that hamster live to escape! I have had several and they all seemed to find a way out of their cages, especially those with the little "treehouses", plastic ones. One girl, Phoebe, just chewed and chewed and finally escaped. She also found a way to the top of a plastic lid of an aquarium and chewed a whole in it. She also chewed through three layers of duct tape that we put over that hole!

I decided to invest in the aquariums, with the screen tops. No more tubes. Just make sure they have a good, accessible wheel, and other things to chew and climb on. And if you choose an aquarium, make sure you have adequate ventilation in the room in the summer time. It gets quite hot in there. I just keep the ceiling fan running "their" room, and also, since I work from home, my air conditioning is always running in the hot months.

Since we had an accident last week while I was on vacation, I thought I would mention to you that you should put the cage in an area that is not accessible to dogs or cats. My Golden Retrievers turned over one of the cages in my absence, and the petsitter found our little Evelyn, in the mouth of one of them. Unfortunately, we lost her. Her replacement (unnamed right now), came home today. I will be MUCH more careful with cage placement, especially when I am not at home and the dogs and cats are inside.

Good luck with your new pet. We enjoy them so much. But like I said, they seem to live to escape. So make sure you take him out for adequate play time, and maybe even let him run around in a safe area in one of those exercise balls. They love it!

Logan



[ July 04, 2001: Message edited by: Logan ]