Houdini hamster escapes cage, scales 7ft wall, scurries a mile... and spends 6 weeks on the run!
IT is a trick even a skilled escapologist would have trouble beating.
But one Houdini hamster stunned her owners by breaking free of her cage and somehow getting past a 7ft garden wall.
Gingy’s heartbroken five-year-old owner Liam Lawrie and his parents, Nicola and Jonathan Lawrie, searched high and low when she went missing, convinced the pet could not have escaped from their enclosed back garden. When there was no sign of her, they feared the worst and thought one of their dogs might have eaten the rodent.
But almost six weeks later, Gingy and Liam have been reunited – after she turned up at a care home a mile from their house in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.
Mrs Lawrie, 37, said: ‘How she survived, I have no idea. It’s a busy road, there’s a factory across from us and lots of seagulls around. It’s amazing she wasn’t picked up by one of them, or a cat. It would be interesting to know where she has been.’
Gingy survived sub-zero temperatures, snow and rain before arriving at the town’s Allandale House care home last month.
A worker on a cigarette break initially mistook Gingy for a rat before scooping her up and taking her home.
The next day she sent her husband to local pet shop Paws and Claws for food. It is managed, in an amazing coincidence, by Liam’s aunt Anna Anderson, who had bought Gingy for Liam six months earlier because he wanted a ginger hamster to match his hair. She said: ‘The man came into the shop and asked what he needed for a hamster because his wife had found one. I said, “It’s not ginger, by any chance?”.
‘I showed him photos of Gingy and when I phoned Liam’s mum to tell her we might have found her, Liam overheard and was so happy he was doing cartwheels.
‘She was a lot skinnier than before and we were worried she might not be as tame after being away for so long but when she saw Liam it was almost like she thought, “Thank God, it’s you”. That is one lucky hamster.’
Mrs Lawrie, an administrator who is also mother to Layton, 11, said: ‘Liam’s over the moon. We have no idea how she managed to get out of her cage, let alone the garden.
‘We’ve got a cat flap for our chihuahuas and think that’s how she got out of the house. But the garden has slabs and a 7ft dyke, it’s not like there was earth for her to have dug through. We still can’t believe she survived so long. It’s a miracle.’
Liam now has two hamsters – his aunt bought him another only days before Gingy was found. Mrs Lawrie said: ‘We have locks on both their cages so neither of them can escape because we have no idea how she did it.’