She Escaped!

So firstly, I finally got round to uploading the pics in the weekend farm post so check 'em out. I especially like the one at the end :)

Secondly, Mom reminded me that today is a week since Gum died. A week ago he was barely living his last few hours. A week. Somehow it seems like it wasn't that far away. Everyday it just gets further tho. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to my few days in Cape Town with the family next weekend. I think it's been especially hard for mom who has had to deal with the admin side of things since my gran & uncle & fam are all still in Namibia and my aunt lives about an hour outside of Cape Town. She's a practical woman, but I wish I was there with her at the moment.

Anyhooo. The real news is that Bell escaped yesterday evening. I got home and let them out of their hutch and headed upstairs to go to the loo, fetch my book, find my skipping rope (you know the sort of stuff). I wasn't gone long, maybe 5 minutes, if that even! And I went downstairs and saw Henna happily munching on the grass. She cutely ran up to me as I went outside and I started to wonder where Bell had gotten to. She wasn't on the grass, I checked inside & under her hutch (under is a favourite hiding place of hers) and inside the house. Still nothing. I rushed outside again following a gut feel and I was right.

Let me explain. We live in a complex and all the houses & gardens are joined together. because we live on a slight downhill, the developers made a hole in each adjoining wall of the garden so that when it rains, the water can wash away without flooding the garden (although when it really rains, the 10cm hole is barely big enough and the garden generally floods anyway!). There is also another little hole in the wall that doesn't really seem to go anywhere. When we first got Bell, we patched up the holes with some plastic mesch-type stuff. Within the first week, the gardeners (they randomly come in an mow the lawn ... I'm thinking of getting a lock for the gate actually) had removed the mesch from the hole leading into the garden to our right. I promptly used an old plastic plant pot to fill the hole, it fitted pretty much perfectly. This did the trick until about a month ago when Bell, curious as ever, realised she could move the pot around (by biting the edge and lifting her head ... cute, actually!). I promptly moved the cat-box (the one they traveled to the farm in) in front of the hole instead (I figure since it doesn't rain in winter it should be fine for now ... but it's far from a permanent solution). Bell then discovered the next hole (luckily the one that doesn't seem to go anywhere!) and kept pulling the plastic mesch out of the hole herself. And then I'd replace it and she'd just remove it again. It was a bit of a game for about 5 minutes. So we blocked that hole up with stones.

Since we used the cat-box on our trip to the farm, I'd replaced the pot to block the hole and while I'd been upstairs, Belly had removed the pot and gone wandering thru the hole. Luckily a) there is no one living there at the moment (the previous owners had dogs - yikes!) and b) she hadn't got far (there are multiple rain-holes out of this garden too ... and it's at the edge of the complex, so even more scary!). I managed to get to her (at least they don't have a lock on their gate either!) and pick her up and get her back home. And naturally replaced the cat-box to block her new-found exit. Sigh. A little excitement I could've done without!

I did my skipping again yesterday afternoon and boy were my calves stiff this morning. A good sign, I feel :)