# Spelunker!



## Beanie (Jun 9, 2010)

Even though I clip my fleece liners to the sides of the cage, I've found Watson hiding under his liner three times in the past week. I even put up extra clips and tugged on it to make sure no gaps happened that he could climb into... but to no avail, he still made it under there. This morning, I took him out, cleaned his wheel, and set him back in and watched him for a bit. Turns out my boy is a climber. He climbed half way up his cage, and THEN LOWERED HIMSELF (no joke) into a gap that couldn't be more than 4 inches wide. Seems like a cave-diver to me! :lol: Now he's my little spelunker... and now it also makes sense how he manages to crawl into the front of my shirt without me noticing.  

Now everything is covered in clips so there aren't big enough gaps for him to do that. I worry that if he climbs down, he won't be able to climb up because there won't be the fleece sides to get him started, or he won't be able to find the gap that he fell in through. Why he can't be normal and just sleep in his igloo? I don't know. I guess I'm not normal either...so maybe he gets it from mom


----------



## LarryT (May 12, 2009)

Watson is a smart little man  
You could try to put someting around the 1st few inches of wire to prevent climbing.


----------



## Beanie (Jun 9, 2010)

LarryT said:


> Watson is a smart little man
> You could try to put someting around the 1st few inches of wire to prevent climbing.


That's the thing...the fleece DOES go up the first few inches of wire  I don't know how he does it


----------



## LarryT (May 12, 2009)

Maybe he's using his igloo for a ladder?


----------



## Beanie (Jun 9, 2010)

Nope watched him do it this morning  It's like rock climbing. He's pretty long rather than wide, so he steps up on his hind legs to give him some umf. Then as he climbs, it pulls it down to create a fold that he can use to hoist himself up. He's still light enough at 3 months old that he can pull himself up using just that haha


----------



## LarryT (May 12, 2009)

A slick little devil :lol:
How's the rescue doing?


----------



## Sela (Apr 10, 2010)

Clever Watson is clever. <3 And people say hedgehogs (and animals in general) are stupid. Watson just proved them all wrong.


----------



## Puffers315 (Apr 19, 2010)

Try this little experiment, its something I'm playing with. The picture is below, I just call it a shoe box house. Find a shoe box, cut a 4 inch doorway at one end of the side of the box, and then line it with fleece. Make sure the shoe box is old or at least well aired out so it doesn't have a strong smell to it.

I had trouble with both of mine going for the 'land down under the liner', seemed like a disease cause Hester started and I fixed it with this style house, then Loki suddenly started doing it, after a month of sleeping inside a vinyl tube. I had one igloo from my first hedgehog Vera. Hester wanted nothing to do with it no matter what I did with it, and Loki just used it as an outhouse. So I created this house.

I think hedgehogs might find it appealing due to its design. An igloo the doorway is basically in the center, so there's very little room for them to be away from the door. This design with the door being at one end I think is more like a burrow to them, both sleep at the extreme opposite end of the doorway.

Hester's house is an actual shoe box, while Loki's house is well, an actual 'shoe box' but its plastic and made by Sterlite, I found them at Walmart (for storage of shoes). His box I darken the sides out with duct tape, which I'm not sure if its the best material, I made sure there was nothing they could chew on, nor did it have a strong odor. If you search Walmart's tape section, they actually have duct tape with designs on them. But I cut a 4 inch door in his like Hester's, used a nail file to smooth the edges (beware when cutting, the plastic is soft but it can shatter, I used a razor and just kept slicing slowly through it). Then as said, made sure the duct tape didn't have any threads of edges the hog could get a hold of.

So far, no more visits to the land of under the liner.










(Hester's actual shoe box house, you can see she's actually made a tunnel out of the fleece).


----------



## tie-dye hedgie (Dec 19, 2009)

You could try and clip coroplast or corrugated plastic about 6 inches up the walls of the cage, that might prevent him from climbing.


----------



## Beanie (Jun 9, 2010)

Puffers, thanks for the suggestion  I put in a smaller section of a fleece blanket folded up and he went in there and seemed content. Maybe it's the full protection instead of the strips? I'll definitely check out the box idea! 

Larry, Calvin is doing great. His skin looks so much more healthy and he's so friendly!! He's such a runner  I'm waiting for my scale to get here so that I can weigh him to see if he's lost any weight. But his wheel is so dirty every morning! Fortunately, it's easy to clean


----------



## Puffers315 (Apr 19, 2010)

I do think it is the full on projection, cause that's what my guys do in these shoe box houses. After Hester ignored the igloo, the second thing I attempted was just one of the extra liners piled into a corner. She slept under that for a week, and then it was back to the world down under the liner.


----------



## smhufflepuff (Aug 28, 2008)

I dunno... I'd take a completely different tack.

Little boy seems bound and determined to get under the liner. It is his way to be under the liner; in his nature to burrow. True, it seems odd to us humans that one would want to sleep on top of plastic when there are more snuggly places. But we're humans and have human desires; he's a hedgie and has hedgie desires. 

Why keep making it more and more difficult (and risky - with the climbing) for him to go where he is the happiest?


----------

