Two words – Olive Oil. We had this unfortunate experience when my youngest daughter had her first play date with a friend from school at our house. My daughter has two little dwarf hamsters which weren’t the best pet pick for a 6 year old. They are super fast and don’t even come close to ever sitting still.
The only way she can hold them is by squeezing them in her fist with only their eyes showing. So, needless to say, they frequently escape and “Catch the Hamster” is the game they end up playing. Well, it was no different when she had this play date. The Catch the Hamster game started. But this time they were having a whole lot of trouble finding her.
So, I called my husband to come down and help. He ended up reclining all the recliners so we could see better under the couches. I laid down on the floor in front of the recliners just to see if I could see her running back and forth. That’s when I see this white box vibrating. The recliners have these white boxes underneath them that hold some of the mechanics of the chairs.
But this box looked different than the other white boxes so I mentioned it to my husband. He reached under the couch and pulled the box out and said yep she’s in here. It was a glue trap! Apparently, our pest control company put this there to catch spiders but they never told us they put it there and really they should’ve known better than to put that there b/c we have hamsters. 🙁 They could’ve easily put that up higher on the window sills or something. Oh well – too late now.
Immediately, my daughter starts screaming and freaking out. Nooooo, not Marshmalloooow!!!! Aaaaaaah!!!! And it looks like she melts into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West did in the Wizard of Oz. I try to tell her we have to stay calm to be able to help her. And her friend tries to calm her down too. My husband asks me to get the scissors so I grab the heavy duty kitchen shears. He gets to work trying to cut the box apart so we can have better access to her.
We move to the bathroom and are all watching him cutting the box apart. Meanwhile, I’m thinking the girls shouldn’t be watching this but how do I get them out of here since they were so concerned. She had gotten stuck to the bottom and the side of the box so when he opened the box up she was literally splayed out on the box on her side/back and totally helplessly stuck. At this point, I tell the girls to run up to the bedroom and play in there while we give Marshmallow a bath. I told them she was going to be fine. But I was pretty sure she was going to die. She was so stretched out and not moving AT ALL. That glue is strong!
My husband struggles to cut the box apart b/c the scissors are sticking to the glue so he asks me to help him. But I was kind of freaking out b/c I was worried that he was going to try to pull this little hamster off the box and she was going to rip in two. Or he was going to get some of his tools from the toolbox and try to saw her off the box or something. So I take off running upstairs and tell him I’ll be right back.
I run to the computer and google, “How To Rescue A Hamster From A Glue Trap” and multiple articles pop up surprisingly enough. Basically, they said Baby Oil, Olive Oil, many different types of oils. The first thing I could find was Olive Oil so I ran downstairs and doused the hamster in Olive Oil being careful to avoid her eyes. Then ran back up to see if I can find any other types of oil in case that didn’t work. Then I hear Bryon yelling for me to help him again.
So, I run back downstairs and see little Marshmallow sitting in the sink and cleaning herself. I think – it’s a miracle!!!! I did not think she was going to come out of that unscathed. At that point, the girls come back down and I tell them they can see Marshmallow now. They were so relieved that she was alive. And I was relieved that this play date didn’t end with an animal dying – talk about traumatic. They run off to go play again.
Bryon told me that all he had to do was massage the oil in a bit and he was able to pretty easily release her – it’s like the oil dissolved the sticking properties of the glue. We then decide we need to wash some of this oil off of her. So, we got the water coming out of the tap to be luke warm and put some baby shampoo on her. She was sitting in Bryon’s hands so still under the running water and moving her head back and forth like she was Stevie Wonder.
It was the cutest thing but at the same time it was alarming to me because she normally doesn’t sit that still. I was starting to wonder if that glue trap had poison in it or something because she wasn’t acting right. But turns out she just liked the warm water because she is fine now.
She was greasy for about a week and we joked that we were going to now have to call her Smore because much of her white fur got ripped off and she was now more black than white. She is now white and fluffy again. All’s well that ends well.