3.17.08 Happy St. Patty's Day! 
OK. I have to tell you about the escape artist in my house! We have recently acquired a new pet. She's a hermit crab and we've named her Bart Simpson, because Bart was painted on her shell when we bought her. We call her a "she" but we have no idea if she's really a "she" or instead a "he". For some reason she looks like a girl. 
Her cage is about a foot wide, deep and tall. It has circle cutouts at various places around the cage for you to reach in and refill water, food, etc... and there are lids with grooves that fit in these circles which you turn to lock them. Well... I don't know if you guys are familiar with hermit crabs, but they're shy and stay hunkered down in their shell if they see you looking at them... or if they are startled or whatever.... Bart likes to stay in her shell all day and then she comes out at night to play. She will climb up the side of the cage with her arms all stretched out as if she's reaching for something out in the middle of the room. We bought various things for her to climb on as suggested by the sales person at the pet store and when she thinks no one is looking she climbs all over the place. It's hilarious. They're very strange-looking creatures.
OK, so....... we kept hearing something over by her cage on Saturday and thought she was just crawling around or eating or whatever (she climbs into her bowl to eat or into the water bowl to drink and makes a clunking sound when she exits the bowl because she drops down onto the bottom of her cage - it's covered in sand).
After about the 4th or 5th loud CLUNK! sound, we commented that, "Dang what in the heck is Bart doing over there?!" so we went to take a look - and lo and behold! She had UNSCREWED AND KNOCKED OUT not one but TWO of the round doors and was hanging halfway out of the TOP of the cage! It was the funniest thing you've ever seen! She'd knocked out the side door and passed it up and went on up to the top, knocked it out and was about to escape! Keep in mind this is not a wire cage that would make this an easy thing to do. It is a hard plastic cage with smooth panels all around the sides and top with strategic air holes here and there..... but she somehow had stretched her arms waaaaaaaaaaay across the smooth parts and twisted TWO doors open!!!
Now I'm afraid to leave her for fear she'll do it again and be lost without food and/or water!
We'd been warned by the pet store that they are very clever escape artists so to be sure to keep the cage securely locked. We thought, yeah, right..... but HELLO, they're right! We even had the doors very securely locked!
I'll have to post a picture of Bart.
More to come........
"We play so fine, don't you agree?" ~ Layne Staley
"We want to celebrate what we did and the memory of our friend." ~ Jerry Cantrell