Indiana Jones Move Over

We've had two adventures today. The first occurred this morning before six o'clock. I had heard strange scurrying noises in the night, but tried to ignore them. This morning when I was getting my shoes on to go walk, I saw a suspiciously familiar looking dwarf hamster running around in our den. It was Goki. I grabbed her and carried her, protesting, back to her cage. Later when it was light enough and Mim was awake, we inspected the cage and found this.



The little twits had chewed away at the rubber ring until they were able to push the porthole out. We still haven't found Luva. I've got some live mouse traps set up, and we'll just hope against hope.

The second adventure was planned. Art decided that this was the weekend to cave in the old cellar in our backyard. This was made at the same time as the houses on this street. (The neighborhood is of the ticky-tacky variety.) It has been useless for the same amount of time. The problem is that it fills with water. I mean several feet of water, depending on the year. Now it will be full of dirt. Art's brother and father came to help this afternoon. (That's his father in the picture.)



I had almost, I mean this close, convinced Art to hire a company from a nearby town to build a pre-cast concrete cellar and come install it themselves. He had figured it up and it would've been cheaper than he and his brother welding one, which was his original plan. However, while the men were working today his father told him he could just build up a wall on one side of the stairs and use the old stairwell as a tiny little 'fraidy hole. (That's what cellars are called here.) Thanks Pops! So now it appears that we will have a cellar consisting of...stairs...hmm. OK, so he saved us a couple thousand dollars...still. It would have been the very first thing that Art had hired done instead of doing himself in our remodeling. (Except the roof, and since that was he and his family, it doesn't count, even though we paid them.) Not that I'm complaining, of course. I love how resourceful and handy Art is, I'm just sayin'. Sometimes it would be nice if he could let someone else do it and go eat pizza with us instead. He'd be as likely to do that as I would be to let someone write a blog post for me, though, so I suppose I can understand. Sort of.

Update: When I went out again they had torn the stairs up too. Apparently the destructive tendencies of the Y Chromosome overrode their genetic tendency to squeeze the last possible use out of something. (I love you, honey!) Pizza party time!