I, Houdini Read online

  I was able to prove this, and a great deal more, very soon.

  My new home arrived the following day. The boys came charging into the house with cries of “Where’s Houdini? We’ve got his cage.” But I was nowhere to be found, having, as I mentioned, got away the previous evening. I was, in point of fact, exploring a new room—Mark’s—and when I heard them tramping about looking for me, I dived into a very small hole I’d noticed earlier in the floor by the fireplace. I swear a fairly large mouse might have got stuck in it, but I made myself into the merest thread of my former self and in a moment I found myself huddled in the deep dust between the joists.

  These are long planks standing on edge that you’ll find between the floor of an upstairs room and the ceiling of a downstairs room. Between them are long spaces, roadways to someone my size, and as there were plenty of places where I could climb over the tops of the joists, I had what then seemed like a huge playground.

  For a while I rejoiced. They would never catch me now! How could they? There was only the one way in, and not even a child could get his hand through that! Happily and, I fear, smugly, I made a nest in a very warm corner near where I had come in (I like a bit of light). I did wonder at the time just why it was so warm; I didn’t have the experience to realize that that thick, long, hot thing nearby was a hot-water pipe. It was much too hot to touch, but it gave off enough warmth to make me comfortable and sleepy. I curled up and dropped off, not feeling the least bit guilty about the row that was going on about me overhead.

  I woke up feeling distinctly uncomfortable. To begin with, the heat had increased to a point where I had dreamed I was being roasted alive. I jumped up hastily and moved to a cooler spot. There was no light coming through the hole now, I noticed, so I decided that it would be perfectly safe to pop up and attend to my other discomfort—hunger.

  I hadn’t managed to eat much the day before, what with one thing and another; that’s the trouble with escaping upstairs—there’s very little food lying about, and I hadn’t yet thought of leaving stores hidden in various strategic places all over the house. I realized I’d probably have to go downstairs to forage. I’d already seen the stairs, while being carried up and down them; they were thickly carpeted and I felt sure I could manage them all right, though getting back up might be a bit of an effort.

  I returned to the spot, below the hole, where I had been sleeping. It was awful just standing there, right next to that pipe—if hamsters could sweat, I’d have been wringing wet. I looked upward. I could just about see the hole. I stood up on my back legs, idiotically convinced that if I stretched to my fullest height, I would somehow miraculously find myself climbing out. But alas! The hole was a good two or three times my height above me.

  When I realized this, I didn’t lose my head—at least, not until I had explored every possibility. I climbed onto the top edge of the nearest joist and ran to and fro, but it didn’t pass near enough to the hole. The only thing that did was that wretched hot pipe. I could see an easy way onto that, farther along, and once on top of it nothing could be simpler than to run to the hole and climb out—it passed just nicely under it. But who could stand on a thing like that? Even standing near it I felt my fur was scorching.

  Now I did begin to panic. I’m ashamed to admit I felt really sick with fear. How would I ever get out? How would I live if I had to stay in here? My nose had already told me there wasn’t so much as a moldy bread crumb anywhere in the large space between the floors, where I now grimly realized I was trapped. As for water! Not a drop, of course. And wasn’t I beginning to be thirsty, what with the heat and my growing terror!

  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 around 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 I 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 moldering 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 draw attention to them. Now I had to draw Mark’s attention. But how? It wasn’t so easy in that hot death trap 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 noise on that, but … So what was I to do? In a flash of genius it came to me.

  What I had to do was—gnaw.

  I climbed up on the joist nearest to the hole, and set to work. I made as much noise about it as I could. I got my mouth full of dust and cobwebs and sawdust. Never mind! I ground my teeth against the wood, ignoring my terrible thirst and weariness. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw!

  It worked! After a very few minutes, I heard Mark stop moving. Then I heard his footsteps coming nearer. I gnawed feverishly! The next thing I knew, the ray of light went out. I stopped working for a moment and looked up. Peering down into the darkness was—an eye.

  I squeaked.

  The next moment he was up and running. “Mom! Mom! Houdini’s under the floorboards!”

  My heart gave a great leap! At least they knew where I was.

  Getting me out, though, proved to be another matter.

  All five of them were soon crouched above me. A flashlight was shone into the hole. I stood in its beam on my hind legs and positively begged like a dog. I heard the children going “Oooh” and “Aaah” and the Mother said, “How on earth can we get him out? Poor little thing!” I felt a poor thing too, and longed to yell up at them, “Never mind the sympathy, what about a drink?” Would they never think how thirsty I must be after a night in that fearful heat?

  “Well,” said the Father slowly, “you’d better give it some water.”

  Bless the man! I forgave him a great deal, past and future, for that.

  How to give me a drink was the next problem. First a strange little spout came down through the hole. This turned out to be the special bottle that had come with the cage, which you drink from by sucking, but of course I couldn’t reach it. Next they poured a little trickle of water down and I managed to catch a bit of that before it sank without a trace into the dust, but it wasn’t much good. Finally they lowered a tiny container on a bit of string. I think it was a bottle lid. Most of its contents spilled before it got to me, but I lost no time in putting away the rest of it.

  Then I was ready for a meal, and it wasn’t long coming. They poured enough grain and bits and pieces down there to bury me. In fact, that’s just about what they did—I was eating the first lot when somebody poured down a new lot on top of me! In the meantime they were discussing what to do.

  “We’ll have to take the floorboards up,” said Mark.

  “Oh no,” said the Father. “That means taking the carpet up and goodness knows what. He got down there; he can get up again.”

  “But he can’t, Daddy! It’s too far down!”

  A beam of light and an eye appeared at the hole and there was a long, exploring pause. Finally the Father said, “He could easily climb out from the water pipe.”

  “It’s too hot for him to stand on!”

  “Oh Lord,” said the Father. “You know what that means, don’t you? We’ll have to turn every
thing off and let it cool down.”

  And that’s what they did. Poor things, they all went without heat and without hot water for some hours and eventually the pipe grew cold and I was able to hop up onto it, run along the top to the hole, and—I was out!

  What a relief. Indescribable!

  Of course I was pounced on the moment I got my head out, but I didn’t care. I was just so glad to be above ground again, to see daylight and to get away from that hateful trap. Do you know that at that moment, when they picked me up, petted me, scolded me, and popped me into my new cage, I honestly thought I would never want to escape again?

  Chapter 5

  I must describe my cage in some detail so that you’ll understand my brilliance in finding a way out of it. Of course it was designed for ordinary hamsters, not for me. Still, I heard Adam remark that the man in the shop had said it was escape-proof, so I can’t help feeling rather proud that it wasn’t proof against me.

  I call it a cage, but that suggests something with bars or wire rather like a box. It was nothing like that. It was round and in layers, like one cake pan on top of another. The two main sections of it were joined, in a very clever way, by a plastic tube, just the right diameter for me to climb up and down through it. It took me just two minutes to discover I could do this by bracing my back against the inside and using my feet. Above the second “cake pan” was a third, much smaller, known as a “loft,” joined in the same way with a climbing tube. That was my sleeping place.

  In the bottom section, the ground floor so to speak, was a built-in wheel for me to exercise on. As soon as I’d had a quick look around the whole premises, I hopped onto this wheel to have a go. It was fun. You just run and run; the faster you run, the faster the wheel turns, so you’re always right way up. I could soon do it so fast that Adam exclaimed, “He’s just a blur, I can’t see the spokes anymore!” Of course, I soon discovered that the wheel is nothing but a substitute for running free from place to place, at least that was the makers’ intention; but as I have seldom had to use it except for pleasure and exercise, I’ve never grown to hate it.

  The floors of the place were made of some solid stuff, but the walls were clear plastic. Near the top of each layer of plastic were little bars. This was to let air in. By standing erect I could put my nose through these bars.

  There was only one official entrance. On the ground floor there was a round plastic plug, which, when pulled out from outside, left a hole. It was the way to freedom—the only way I could see at first. The loft had a sort of lid that could be taken off, but it fit very tightly. There was one other hole, through which my water spout was stuck. All in all, not a bad little place as cages go, but none too promising for a dedicated escapologist like me.

  Well, they put some food in for me, and some bedding, and the water spout, and they watched me for ages till I’d finished exploring and then off they went. I was pretty well whacked, so I went up into the loft, carrying the bedding with me, made a nest, stored some food underneath it, had a drink, and went to sleep. In my dreams I was already exploring ways to get out. I gnawed the metal bars and they fell away like matchsticks. Of course when I woke up, I realized they wouldn’t, but I had a try just to make sure. As I gnawed them, my nose was outside the cage, and I could smell all the fascinating smells of the house. I had to get out! But I was not impatient. Even the human Houdini couldn’t have escaped from his chains and sacks without practice and cunning.

  Well, in brief, I was in that cage for several weeks. True, they let me out occasionally to play with me, but you can’t think how careful they were—their Father had threatened that I would be taken back to the shop if they let me escape them again. One thing they did, though, was to put me at the top of the stairs and let me climb down. There was no question of escape—Mark stood at the top and Adam and Guy at the bottom—but I didn’t mind. It was wonderful experience, and great fun too, plopping down those stairs headfirst, one by one. Halfway down I stopped and tried going back up again. As I’d suspected, it was harder, but the carpet gave my claws excellent grip and I was at the top again before the boys recovered from their amazement. Goodness me, how excited they were! They called their Mother and made me do my stair trick over and over again until I was quite worn out. I didn’t really mind. I just practiced doing it faster and faster. I knew it would come in useful one day.

  My hamster house was kept on the upstairs landing, outside Mark’s bedroom door. It wasn’t the quietest place for it. The first time the Mother ran her vacuum cleaner along the strip of carpet alongside me I woke up with such a jump I nearly popped the lid clear off the loft! And the boys, playing in their rooms, made a terrible din. So did their parents, shouting at them morning and night to get them either out of or into bed. However, there was a certain period of each day when I could count on peace and quiet. Then I could sleep or, when I was awake, do a bit of serious thinking.

  What I thought about most was how I was going to escape.

  By this time I’d tried everything, from chewing the plastic to pushing out the plug. The first was no good because there were no edges I could get a start on with my teeth—all the rims were bound with metal. The second I couldn’t manage—the plugs were jammed in and secured with wire springs. For a long time, the problem defeated me. But at last I found the answer—by accident.

  One night, when I’d been cooped up for three days without them taking me out for a run, I became really desperate. I was so restless that I really felt life wasn’t worth living if I couldn’t stretch my legs properly. I’d run on that idiotic wheel until I should have been exhausted, but I wasn’t. It just made me all the hungrier for freedom.

  I’ve mentioned that when I grow desperate I sometimes do silly things, like running round in circles in the bottom of the bin or going down into that awful hole. Well, now I did something silly too. I tried to climb out through the bars. This was quite mad of me really, because they were only an inch high and about half an inch apart and the whole thing was lunacy, but—well, I felt crazy, as I said, so I got hold of one bar in my teeth, grabbed hold of two others with my front paws, and just—struggled. Scrambling upward with my back feet, pressing my shoulders against the ceiling, I strained and pushed, willing those bars to give way and let me through. Naturally, they didn’t—but something else did.

  Suddenly I felt something give. It wasn’t the bars; it was the solid ceiling above my head! I paused, wondering if it was another dream, and then, with redoubled energy, strained again. I was not wrong! The whole top of the house was shifting, tube, loft, and all!

  Heaving and struggling, I pressed upward with my back. The trouble was there was no foothold for my paws, or I could have moved the silly lid in a minute. As it was, it was a slow, laborious business; but in the end, I’d shifted it just enough for me to wriggle through. Then, head down, I jumped. In another moment I was heading for the stairs.

  Oh, it was wonderful to be free! I scampered down those steps in a twinkling. A feeling of almost hysterical delight came over me as I saw that all the doors downstairs were open. Lights were out—everyone had gone to bed—but it wasn’t too dark to see my way, and there were plenty of smells to guide me. I headed for the living room first, the piano room I call it. I was so overjoyed to get back into my piano again! I hadn’t realized till then that I had grown—I was now full-sized—and to my excitement I found I could now climb right to the top inside. There was a marvelous place there, with rows of little wooden hammer things with their tips covered in lovely soft felt. Ah, I thought. Perfect for a nest! I’d already planned during my weeks of imprisonment how I would make nests all over the house to retreat to if I ever got the chance, and stock them with food so that no matter what room I was in, I would have a safe refuge where I could stay for some days.

  I got to work on the felts. As soon as I had chewed off enough soft stuff to fill both cheeks I would nip down to a platform I had found about halfway to the ground, de-cheek the bedding, and then climb up to get mo
re. I did the better part of the whole nest before I allowed myself time off to forage for a bite to eat.

  I thought I’d have to go to the kitchen for that, but there was a really delicious smell right there in the living room, which I decided to investigate first. I traced it to the area of the fireplace. It was coming down from above somewhere—a fresh, fruity smell, richer and moister than grain. I was determined to find out what it was, and get some, if it was any good. But how to get up there?

  After several head-on attempts, which the still-glowing embers foiled, I went to the side of the fireplace. There I found a perfect way up. Mind you, I won’t say it was easy. It was a straight wall, with a sticking-out bit covered with rough stuff like brick or cement; but the wall, luckily for me, was covered with some material like sacking. This gave me all the foothold I needed, and feet spread, I was up that angle as quickly as I went up my tubes at home. Pretty soon I was on the mantelpiece above the fire, and there I found my prize.

  It was a large vase full of sprays of red berries. I’d never tasted a berry before, but I had had fresh fruit and salad, so I knew it would be good. I scrambled up the wall, pressing my back against the vase, and pretty soon I was having a marvelous time swinging on the sturdy branches and twigs, gobbling up these little red berries until neither my stomach nor my cheeks could hold any more.

  I was just turning my thoughts—not without some worries—to the much more difficult downward climb, when I spotted a particularly luscious-looking bunch of berries right out on the tip of the branch I was on. Yes, it was sheer greed that made me go for them—I don’t deny it. I just couldn’t bear to leave them there. Also, perhaps my antics in the piano and on the stairs had made me too confident. None too cautiously I began to edge along the branch toward the cluster.…