I awoke at 2 this morning to the soft glow of the stove light. Larry had, once again, left it on when he went to bed. On my way to turn off the light, I checked on Ginger as always. NO GINGER! Empty hannie house, empty corners, no wheel in motion -- just an empty ball sitting on the chair next to her table.
I immediately went into the bedroom and woke Larry. "Where's Ginger!" I inquired. "I don't know." was the reply. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep. In shock, I left it at that and got the flashlight. The search went on for two hours. I searched every room, flipping furniture, looking in closets and cubby holes, checking cabinets, everywhere -- even the laundry basket. No Ginger. The dropping next to the gaping hole under the stove told me that she may be gone forever.
I decided food might help bring her out of hiding, so I set out 3 little piles of fruit and waited. Still nothing. Exhaustion finally set in, so I set the fruit and some sunflower seeds on plastic bags (so I'd hear her) and laid down on the couch. I had decided that I may have to wait quite a while (maybe days) for her to come out of hiding.
Larry woke me at 6 with apologies and an explanation. Ginger had climbed up on his shoulder while he was emtying pellets from her ball. The next thing he knew she was down his back and GONE. He had also searched frantically with no luck. She simply disappeared. The sound of scratching that woke him up gave us new hope.
The search resumed. Under and behind the fridge, under the stove, around the dishwasher, under and inside the furniture, and two more searches of every other place we had already searched. Finally we decided to launch a room-by-room search and block off hiding places as we checked them.
Now, I kept recalling how my friend said they found their dwarf hamster in a show on a shelf closet (a week later). Ginger spent an awful lot of ball time in front of the closet where larry keeps his discarded tennis shoes. I had already looked at and searched around the box, but had not done a shoe-by-shoe search. I was several shoes into the box when the little critter popped her head out. With sleepy eyes she looked at me as if to say "What? Can't you see I'm sleeping here? Go away!"
After 6 hours on her own, Ginger is finally back in her home and sleeping it off. I made her promise never to run away from home again. Like she'll ever get the chance!