That's NOT funny, Gomez

I think I've mentioned before that I'm a bit of an alarmist. I'm paranoid and very fond of taking preventative measures because I know I'm not great in a crisis. This is why my cat has never set foot out doors, my cockateil's wings are clipped, my livingroom is *beyond* bunny proofed, and my snakes are locked down tighter than alcatraz.

That said, I peek in on Gomez this morning. Last few times, even though the hides are kind of big, I could see his cute little fat butt hanging out of them. Nothing. I grew mildly concerned. Well... I could take a little peek, that won't stress him out... just for my state of mind... I peek under hidey box #1... No, he must be on the cool side then... well, a little peek just to make sure he's okay... under hidey box #2... NOTHING. :omg: My eyes get round as saucers, and I search the substrate there for a moment... NOTHING. I returned the lid into place out of habit and proceed to run around in circles in a complete panic of disbelief... How in the HELL did he get out of that thing!! And on only the second day here with us!! I have a complete nervous breakdown in the span of like 7 seconds. My cat and cockatiel stare at me as I run around searching desperate...

I lift the cage lid again hoping maybe I had *somehow* missed his tubby self... then I see something slightly off from what the skull's coloring ought to be... From the angle I had been at... it was REAL easy to miss... So I move around and peer and breathe a huge sigh of relief as Gomez peers right back with a look like "What?"

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...gomezskull.jpg

Way to give mommy a heart attack, Gomez :rolleyes: At least I know he likes the skull, lol! I didn't think he could fit in there!

I bet it's just very snuggly. Those hides are definitely too big if he'd prefer the skull, since that's so open too. But I can totally sympathize with you about the feeling of absolute panic. Last night I did my nightly check on everyone, and lastly was Turtle. I look in the tub, don't see him out. ok. Check out the hide. Nothing. ACK! How the heck did he get outta the tub!?! But before I had a total heart attack I pulled the tub completely out of the rack and looked under the newspaper, and there he was! Sheesh! It takes your heart 30 minutes or so to go back to normal! ;)

I'm glad he was still in there and everything was fine. (except your blood pressure :P )

Omg Sheree I should NOT laugh....but OMG....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

There is a ton of sympathy in that laugh but still, the visual of you freaking and him all the time nice and tucked up in his skull.....well hell girl this just made my whole day LMAO! Don't you worry, we've all had that drop in the gut, heart stopping experience at some time or another I would dare to say or if not, we will and you can book the laugh your butt off at us space right now! LOL

I haven't had a chance to go through all the threads yet but I'm catching up fast and am off right now to check out your posts on getting Gomez.

You have got to put that pic in for next month's BPOM photo contest....it's stunning!


~~Jo~~

P.S. Check out the thread I put in about in the BCI/BCC forum awhile back about Rauri the BCI hiding in his substrate. How a freaking 6 foot columbian redtail can wiggle down into his substrate so completely hiding himself so I too did the "holy mother of.....RAURI'S MISSING!!!!" scream, dash madly around the house, praying to every diety ever prayed to and wondering how in heck I was going to break this to Becky.....then I look and there he is peeking up from his substrate! I swear he was smirking!!!

Heehee! Cute story ^__^ I love the pic too =P He's just too darling!

Glad you found him and that he did not get out. I would have not thought of looking in the skull thats for sure! I would have freaked too. A few years back 2 of mine got out, I was freaking badly, the one was found 2 days later by my Dad in the kitchen cruising along the floor against the counter, Dad brought him to me and said "sweetheart, I found something you have been looking for", being half asleep I wondered why in the world Dad would bother me so early since we were on 2nd sift hours...so I open the door to find my Dad standing there with one of my escapees. I was still freaked out though cause I still had one gone, we tore the house apart every day for over a week, and about the time I gave up, thinking he got into the heater that was very old, like a radiator thing sitting in the floor of our living room that also had access once you get through the metal grate to the crawl space under the house, which had huge spaces, he showed up on the shelf just under his cage, by my pet mouse. So I can totally related to how any of you feel/have felt when your animals get out unintentionally.

I keep imagining how he must have been watching me the whole time I was searching for him. "Gee, what is she doing over there? I'll just stay here out of her way" :P I'm going to go ahead and cut the hides to make them smaller while he's in the skull looking at me like I'm crazy. Seriously, you can barely see him at all when you're looking down on it. I'm lucky I spotted him as quickly as I did! The pic did turn out quite nice though, didn't it? I think I will indeed enter it. Gives me hope that someday when Falkor is bigger I can get some decent pics of him too.

I also knew you guys would understand, lol! I've read plenty of other panicky posts around here. They like to keep us on our toes and it's amazing where they can get into! :rolleyes:

That is too funny! I had the same thing happen with Kashmire. In my avatar you can see him on top of his cool side hide. Well, that was the first time he went up there, and I was in the habit of peeking in each of the hides. I peeked, and peeked and peeked, and looked all over the floor of the enclosure and NOTHING! I was freaking out! And there he was, just chilling on top of his hide and watching my face turn various shades of red to white! LOL

one morning i woke up and looked over at Monty's cage and the the door was hanging off. i shot up out of bed and ran over but on the way there i noticed a "big brown goodie package" lying on the floor in the middle of the room.


i was way to stressed to care.

so i start tearing my room apart ( the door was closed so i hoped that he wsa still in there. and i searched for like 20 minutes before i made my way over to the tank and as i was ducking under it i noticed the little monster curled up in the back of the cage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so as far as i can figure, i either have a second snake i dont know about in my room. or Monty got out. took a dump. and went back in!

lol! Everyone's stories are certainly helping :D Although my heart itself is still recovering. Yeash. :laughing:

Wow! What a pic! I had to look closer to find G's head!!!!


I did the saaaame thing. Not 20 min after putting Kishnah in his tank, he disappeared. Coming back into the room, we couldn't find him. I had read about their Houdini skills but jeeeez! 20 minutes!???!?? Sifted thru the aspen.....finally found him UP in the lip/rim of the lid. The screen has an extra little lip, and he was aaaaall stretched out it. He's (she?) so skinny FD and I could barely see him. We didn't notice him until he started scooting down the length of that side.

Now, before we even try to open the lid to do water, cleaning/poo duty, I ALWAYS crane my head around the four sides of the lid JUST to make sure!

Whew!!! I TOTALLY empathize!!!

RuLyn

You write wonderfully humorously and descriptively - I just have this image of you running around in circles and pulling your hair out :) - but I can completely understand it - I have 3 baby rankin dragons in a 4 foot viv and I am constantly "losing" one :D - and there's so much dragon-colored stuff in there for them to hide themselves in/against it's literally "Spot the dragon".

Thank you, Raziel! I hope to write professionally so that's always nice to hear. :)

Crazy herps... I always know where everybody else is! Heck, the cockatiel won't *let* me lose track of her some days ;)

Eeee! He's *so* cute in there! :D

I read a good, similar story on a betta forum - so it's not my story but it was accompanied by a great pic as well. The owner noticed that the fish appeared to be gone and they thought it had jumped out the small gap in the lid. So they were searching and searching and positive that the poor fish was a crispy critter by then, and then they finally spotted the fish, resting inside of a curled leaf at the surface of the water. He looked *exactly* like a little fish taco. :) Best photo I'd ever seen.

hahahaha these are GREAT stories... had a great laugh - thanks everyone!

here's my story i posted on a bearded dragon forum... last summer:

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Oh man, being pregnant is not the most fun thing, and as this is my third clutch in the last few months... I’m getting pretty good at this whole waiting game. So the other day I decided to be a pain in the butt... I thought that if I just kept scratching at my plexi door my mama would let me go for a cruise around the house. I knew that if I was digging and looking like I really needed to lay my eggs she wouldn’t let me cruise so I held back the temptation to dig cause I wanted to cruise!

So mama lets me out and I start cruising around the house. Nothing new in any of the rooms, everything is just as I left it yesterday. Wait, what’s this??? Hmmm, is that the outside? Oh this is my lucky day, someone left the door open.

Well, I’ve never been here before. I do remember mama carrying me thru this space before though. I wonder how I’m going to get down. It’s a loooong way down and the other option is these stairs... I don’t really like stairs but the other option is jumping and flying (which by the way, I happen to love doing but my mama gets mad at me when I do) so let’s flop down these wooden stairs to the yard.

Okay, so let’s see, someone laying in the sun, she’s that daughter who doesn’t like me much. I could go climb on her back and make her scream (I love making her scream) but then she’s going to get me put back into the house and I don’t wanna go back yet.

So let’s sneak by her,... under this bush, over to this tree... did she see me? No. Okay, keep going... under the fence and cedar bushes and WOW what is this? There’s a whole world out here! I can see for miles and miles.

Sure are a lot of people out here... don’t see mama anywhere so I’m safe. I think I’ll wander down this little rocky road... onto this grass and hey, look at this - I could do some digging here!

Laying in the sun, digging... oh now folks this is the THE life. (Hours pass... basking and diggin’)

What, who are you? Oh are you going to carry me back to mama? How nice, service with a smile... okay ya sir, I live just beyond those cedar bushes over there. No I didn’t say I wanted to go for a ride with you. HELP I’M BEING ABDUCTED!!! I don’t know who you are or why you are taking me away but I wanna go home now... mama’s gonna be worried about me.

What are you doing? No you cannot look at me like that! No I don’t want to eat a spider! No I don’t wanna live in this box... oh where is mama and why can’t I go home. *sobbing* I want to go home to my nice enclosure with silkies and my favorite basking log.... oh how could I just venture out like this... mama will never find me now *sobbing*

*Off to sleep and in the morning*... where's my mama... I don't wanna live in a box... I want my basking log.... oh mama where are you?????

MAMA IT’S YOU how did you find me? I was on a big adventure mama... I went out to lay my eggs and when I was done this guy picked me up and took me home. I’m so glad I found you... or you found me! I’m sooooo hungry!

(back in a box and off to home I go) Ah yummy silkies... thanks mama *munch munch* yes, I would like more, thank you.... and yes some more.... oh yes, more please. Now a bath... oh mama you take such good care of me. I soooo wanted a bath after laying all those eggs but that guy just didn’t know. Now don’t get me wrong mama, he took care of me as best as he knew how, but he wasn’t you mama... thanks for searching for me mama.

Off to bask on my favorite log....

And so ends the story of Raphael’s big adventure. The little miss snuck out of the house yesterday and vanished. Today I went into the petstore and mentioned that she was somewhere in the house but we couldn’t find her... only to find out that the guy who rescued her from the baseball field was looking for me! The petstore told him to call the SPCA... and they forget to get him name and number before they hung up... then the SPCA told him to call animal control and forgot to get his name and number before they hung up. Then animal control was out to lunch... literally. We called the newspaper and they said we just missed him... and they forgot to get his name and number... so on went the saga... but finally we met up at the SPCA and Raphael, empty of eggs and dehydrated climbed onto my hand and immediately cuddled into me... wanting to go home.

oh and by the way... i forgot to get his name and number!

Wow - you could have been talking about my BD 2 summers ago - exactly the same thing happened to her - she just disappeared and the doors were all shut - but we reckon she jumped out the window (possible because there are leges and stuff she could have climbed up to). She was gone for a week but we stuck up posters and rewards and stuff everywhere and she eventually turned up casually sunbathing in the guy next door's garden. He also put her in a box :) He also admitted he was scared of touching her :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MedusasOwl

Thank you, Raziel! I hope to write professionally so that's always nice to hear. :)

Crazy herps... I always know where everybody else is! Heck, the cockatiel won't *let* me lose track of her some days ;)

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I thought I could tell you are a writer ;) - have done some dabbling in it myself a few years ago and thought I'd write professionally - alas between kids and herps and other things - no time :(

My parrot's good to lose in the house - if he creeps off somewhere and I can't immediately find what he's got his beak into - I call him and he'll answer me so I can find him - no chance of herps doing that ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Razaiel

I thought I could tell you are a writer ;) - have done some dabbling in it myself a few years ago and thought I'd write professionally - alas between kids and herps and other things - no time :(

My parrot's good to lose in the house - if he creeps off somewhere and I can't immediately find what he's got his beak into - I call him and he'll answer me so I can find him - no chance of herps doing that ...

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It would be nice if they would, lol. Even better if they'd just come when you called! Of course I also think it would be nice if herps could purr. Heck, puppies and rabbits should purr too. It would just make the world a more adorable place ;) But coming when you call would probably be more practical.

Writing professionally is a pain even with the time :/ Worth it, I think, but still hard. I've always dabbled and when I got the outline of my novel together I expected to just get it cranked out... Instead it becomes a dysfunctional love/hate relationship that consumes my poor brain! Seriously, how people can come out with a new book every year or so is beyond me! Especially after having to toss out the last 25 pages realizing that they didn't move the story. Urg. And that's not even counting how I've mastered the art of procrastination. I am very impressed with writers who make money. I'd like to be one of those some day. This book by Donna Levin , despite it's doofy title, has been awfully helpful though! I recommend it, even helps you find a bit of extra time here or there for when there's a story in your brain that *must* escape. :)