Prairie Dog Prison Break

Wilma learned how to open her cage. When I say learned, I mean LEARNED. It wasn’t a one-time accidental opening, it was a full-fledged, I can open this any time I want type of learned. She was roaming around the house, TW put her back in her cage and closed the door. 15 minutes later, she was out roaming around again. TW put her back and I sat here at my desk, reading blogs and watching her open the cage over and over again. (Each time she opened it, I got up and closed it.) I started telling her to cut it out, as she’d go back to open it – and she’d stop. Finally, she wandered away from the cage door and I forgot about her. Until she got out again.

I tried to call her over, like TW does – she took one look at me and ran the other way. So I started walking behind her, calling TW to come get her and then she noticed me and turned around and CHASED ME. I yelled for TW to save me – she did but guess what. Wilma got out again. And this time the others noticed she was free and that she’d left the cage door open for them.

TW rounded them all up – evil Betty was not pleased with this and I stayed well clear until TW had safely scooped her up in a towel and plopped her back inside. Then we went looking for something to keep the darn cage door closed. TW tried some sort of plastic hook that I’m pretty sure the Prairie Dogs will eat through in about three days – which is fine since it’s stuck on there and we can’t get it off. But it won’t keep Wilma from opening the cage and shoving through the space available to her. So, TW got a heavy duty padlock and wedged it onto the door. She wedged it so well that we couldn’t get it off – or the door open.  After about ten minutes, we finally jerked it free and replaced it a little more loosely. Wilma can still get that cage open but not enough to slither through – we hope.

I wish I’d had the camera close by when she first discovered the padlock. She rattled that thing so hard, I thought she was going to break the cage. Here’s a video, from a few minutes later, of her trying to figure out how to outsmart the padlock – and us.