Small adventure

[helen99]

I went to my bedroom to get something, and Gamaliel was sitting by the dresser, peering very intensely at a point between the dresser and the left speaker. This would not surprise me usually, because he peers intensely at everything. However, this time he persisted, and after a minute or so I heard rustling back there. I thought maybe he'd identified the location of a mouse. As quietly as possible, I removed some objects that were between me and the point from which the rustling was coming... I thought I could see a mouse poking its head out from behind the speaker, but it seemed too motionless. When I removed the clear plastic box that was partially blurring my view, I realized the 'mouse face' was just some discolorations on a stick that had fallen back there - it wasn't a mouse at all. So what was that rustling? I looked more carefully, and there, ready to go behind the furniture where I'd never see him again, was Zim. At first I thought that perhaps an egg I didn't know about had hatched somewhere in the house - weren't Zim and Zotz secure in their tank? As the reality that I could have lost him sank in, I scooped up Zim and inspected him for damage. Somehow, he avoided losing body parts to Gamaliel, and was entirely unscathed. I'm not sure how he avoided being hurt, since Gamaliel has always been very interested in the snake babies and has no qualms about pouncing on and playing with anything that moves. My next thought was, "if Zim escaped, maybe Zotz got out as well"... Fortunately, Zotz was happily asleep under his coconut shell. I checked to see why Zim had been able to escape - surely he couldn't lift 15 pounds of books. Then I realized that when I replaced the lid after giving them water and feeding Zotz yesterday, I hadn't completely closed the lid. There was a tiny opening about an 8th of an inch wide, which was all he needed... The weights on top of the tank didn't help, since the lid was on crooked to begin with.

Glad I found him. Glad they've become vertically adept - shows they're vigorous and healthy... Glad I'll be putting them in a bigger tank with real clamps from now on...