Lynne Banks - I, Houdini

A grown-up hamster who’s got himself into a mess will, if he’s got any sense, at once sit down, partly to conserve energy and partly to think. I behaved ridiculously. I ran round in circles, I made funny little noises that I hadn’t known I could make; I climbed up on the joist and fell off it again; I even tried to climb the pipe, and hurt my paws of course. Oh, that pipe! It was maddening to see the way it lay, just beneath the hole, offering the perfect escape route, and yet – impossible to use.

At last I was fairly worn out. I couldn’t sleep, I was too distracted, but I did lie down, at some distance from the hole, and just stared at it in misery. I supposed I would just waste away there in the dusty dark, slowly starve to death and be found, perhaps, years later, a mouldering skeleton…If hamsters could weep, I would have wept, with frustration, fear and self-pity, though of course I’d brought it all on myself.

Morning came. A ray of light fell through the hole. I heard Mark moving about above me. And suddenly I knew what to do.

When I’d escaped before I had often been caught when accidentally or carelessly making a noise. Hamsters have no proper voice, as I’ve said, though they can utter faint squeaks and hisses; but their feet scrabbling on a hard surface draws attention to them. Now I had to draw Mark’s attention. But how? It wasn’t so easy in that hot hell-hole I’d landed myself in. The floor was thick with dust and I could walk there without a sound. The joists were the same. The pipe was metal and I could have made a terrific row on that, but…! So what was I to do? In a flash of genius it came to me.

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