Capture

Last night around midnight, Luke heard a noise, then another noise and another. He tiptoed out of his room (okay, Luke doesn't tiptoe--he's more like a mastadon, but you get the idea) and woke up Ariel. In the darkness they surrounded Oswald, flipped on the lights, and captured him.

Later, during Oswald's interrogation (which did not involved torture, merely the dangling of honey-coated bird treats in front of his nose), Luke and Ariel discovered that Oswald had set up his base of operations under Luke's dresser. And, though Oswald did not protest during his arrest, he was furiously chewing the bars of his cage this morning. Luke believes Oswald spent his time on the lam recruiting other creatures in his bid for world domination. So we'll have to see what other creatures try to escape. Our spy network has told us that Jezebel was recruited, but she refused to participate--Oswald couldn't better her current arrangements of four square meals, a warm bed, plenty of bones, and a two and half mile run over the hills three times a week. Besides Jezzie thought Oswald's secret code was a bit over the top.

Escape

The other day, Ariel's hamster Oswald escaped from his cage during the night--he knocked the cage onto the floor, the wheel broke off the cage, and he hightailed it. How Ariel slept through this all is rather mystifying. And we haven't seen any sign of him since. Luke talks about Oswald breaking free to mate with rats and then discusses of the possibility of hunting ham-rats in the basement, Cal talks about a tasty treat for Jezebel (our five month old black Lab), Jacob talks about the lights dimming as Oswald chews through electrical wires, and Matt mentions seeing the phantasm of poor, dear Oswald. Ariel "patiently" ignores it all.

Personally, I believe that Oswald is a secret agent who has been "placed" in our home to spy out the secret goings on--who gets up for a midnight snack and leaves the pizza out on the counter, who leaves legos/dining room chairs/violin cases in the middle of the floor to be tripped over, and who gets up and secretly transmits coded messages about world domination and demands a new knuckle bone.