[Curious]

What a dilema.

Right smack next door to our gym is a pet store. They really do take good care of the pets that they sell. Mostly fish and small pets and the food and stuff. Anyway...

Hubby just called me and there was a hamster running across the gym floor.
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Since we have 2, he is well versed on catching one.
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This one he said was wild. Squeeling while running. Pouches were full.

He ran right into a hole in the aerobic room wall.
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Right where we are placing another outlet.

I got this funny feeling that this is not a lone hamster that has gotten loose from the pet store.
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What would be the odds?

About a year or so ago a pastry shop in our shopping center got closed down because of rodents. We were told rats and field mice. They weren't close to our business, but the whole center had traps and got exterminated.

So the dilema...do I call and tell the landlord? That will mean the death of this hamster.

How do I try and trap it?

It's not like when CUrry, one of ours ran away from home Christmas day. We had his buddy Basil to get him back home.

I'm sad over this, but we can't have a hamster livng in the aerobic room walls. I can just see him coming out for Yogo class.
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Or the weight class.
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[mrsD]

I don't know what to say.

I have worked in pharmacies that had roaches in the empty vials used for drugs! ( next door was a large grocery chain).. at that one location a patient actually got a roach in
her meds! Imagine that! O.O ...it was a temp assignment for me. And eventually that store moved to a stand alone location...NO WONDER!

I have worked in stores, that had mice and rats (2 actually that had groceries next door). Our Liquor manager used to bean them with a yard stick...he was very good at it!)

I have worked pharmacies that were part of a chain like K-mart, which had loose escaped animals.

Our own grocery where we shop has loose parakeets above the check out. In summer there are sparrows who fly in thru the doors!

If you are next to a pet shop, there WILL be escapees. I don't see how they can be 100% vigilant and careful.

I don't know how you should handle it.

1) you can set out d-con and kill them
2) you can set out live traps, but then what would you do about them once you caught them?
3) you can buy sonic emitters and hope it will drive them back?

But I think it is a common problem, and perhaps a losing battle?

[Curious]

I have some of the sonic things. I forgot about those.

I have to keep thinking about the damage that can be done. PLus, who knows how many there are. They could have been maing a colony for a year.
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I hate the thought of killing hamsters.
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Hubby said he had the side door open for fresh air about an hour before he saw it. That is the guess where it came from. No droppings or smell.

ACK. Gross MrsD.

We used to get birds in our location. In the pool area. It had a retactable roof. We learned to never open it.
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[Doody]

Oh, forget the outlet and build a little home around the hole in the wall for the hamster, LOL!

My own experience with poison is just awful. Once those little guys get into the poison, who's to say where they will go to die? I had a mouse die inside one of my couches 30 years ago after using one of those poisons. I couldn't get at it. Wasn't long before that started to (EWW) really stink. Or do they make poison now that the little beasts just roll over and die immediately?

I'd live trap 'em and take 'em back to the pet store.

[karousel]

I say Save the Hamster!!!! Live trap it and give it to the pet store. I don't know if they'll even take it though. I am a hamster lover so I'm biased. Wait, mail it to me! LOL.

[Curious]

The pet store has said they can't take it. It can't be sold, nor put with other hamsters in the store. It might have caught some disease. They would just have to kill it.
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What they said is that once one is wild, you can't tame it.

They wouldn't admit to having "lost" any.
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I'm biased too. We have so much fun with ours. They are like puppies. They follow me around in their balls. Really tame ones. They love to cuddle and give kisss.
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I hope the little fellow will just run right back out the door.
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[~scrabble]

How about leaving a trail of sunflower seeds?

[dahlek]

I'm having images of 'mutant' hampsters taking over the gym!
As in "Teenage Mutant Ninja HAMPSTERS!" or something....

I really, truly can't help the pictures that are popping into my mind!

I guess about dealing with them tho? Trap them and take them to the Humane Society? Or maybe there is a 'national hampster rescue league' somewhere? Be sure to take pics of the captured critters to show that you'd been 'visited', tho. Maybe the Humane Soc and the Health Dept can do a 'double check' of the pet store's inventory and be sure... you know?

These critters aren't living where they should be. For better or worse, YOU have to protect you and yours safety-wise.

Hugs?! - j

[Lara]

I don't know too much about Hamsters. I know more about snakes and possums LOL If we get either of those in a roof or somewhere we can't get to them then there are people who will come trap them and relocate them, although the possums have to be relocated back in the area, they can't be taken away.

Hamsters? Heck imagine if you have a male and a female who have absconded? Next thing you'll have dozens. The only thing you can do really is to put out food and water in a cage next to the wall. You also don't want the poor thing dying inside the wall cavity. That would be awful.

I see there is a Hamster society in the UK.
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They have a section called "How to recapture an escaped hamster".
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Food, food and more food. Sounds the way to go.
good luck with it. UGH.

[Curious]

Well, since they are nocternal and we aren't there when it's play time, I just don't see how the food and cage thing will work.

Plus, we have a business to run and can't have food sitting outside an outlet.
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I wish there was some way to capture and rehab the guy/gal. If I didn't have 2 already, I would take him home if we could catch him.

I'm really hoping he has left the building. I was there for hours today. Ikept sneeking into the aerobic room to some "stretches" on the floor near the hole. Tapped onthe wall a few times and never heard anything.

I'll let y'all know how the saga of the gym hamster goes.
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