Henlow is a little bugger!!!

Tonight we were happily sitting watching TV when we started to hear some weird noises. They were sort of scrabbling scratching kind of noises. They sounded a lot like the noise that Henlow makes when he is rummaging around in his house under the stairs. But it was definitely coming from within the living room and not from under the stairs

The first couple of times we heard it I said we should just ignore it - it had to be Henlow making the noises, it sounded too familiar. It was just coming from slightly the wrong direction is all. The sounds in the house tonight must be just echoing around strangely.

But then we heard it again...and again...

It was definitely coming from the living room and sounded like something was behind the TV. So that meant dragging he TV out from the corner of the room and looking under there. It must be a mouse so when we moved it we expected something to be moving pretty quickly. Shoes on and door shut. Let's go for it and find this thing.

So we slowly started to move the TV stand out of the way. With our shoes on and the door firmly shut as we were fully expecting something very small and fast to dart out from under there and try to run as far away from us as possible.

So under the TV found we found this disgusting mess of tangled wires...

And right in the middle (on the side closest to the TV) amongst the fluff and dust that was under there, there was also what I thought was the biggest but slowest mouse that I have ever seen in my life! I genuinely couldn't work out what it was for a while. It was a big, dark coloured lump. That looked ever so slightly tortoise shaped.

It was! It's Henlow that was hiding out under there!

I have no idea how he managed to get out or even really how long for. I haven't seen him for a Cole of days but mostly because I have left the house well before he's up in the morning and we've been really busy in the evenings this week.

Adam has definitely fed him this morning and as per usual his food has all goner so he can't have been out for that long.

I feel a lot like one of those parents who's kids has run off around a corner and for 30 seconds or so they are not sure where they are. Totally relieved when they are found again and all they really want to do is give them a huge hug and kiss and tell them how much they love them. But equally you can tell that they really feel like they should be mad at the kid for running off in the first place and feel they should give them a good telling off for hiding or running away.

We did both feel very sorry for him and wanted to spoil him a little so a nice new big bowl of food would work for that for now.

We sort of wanted to give him some strawberries from our next door neighbours strawberry plants that we are looking after while she's on holiday but that was were I drew the line. We had to draw a line somewhere. Well until tomorrow morning anyway.

I am so pleased that we found him and he is nice and safe and sound.

We are still really confused as to how he managed to get out. Unless tortoises can jump and we are just not aware of this skill that the little man has then the only way that we can possibly think of would have been for him to have lifted the door to his house. I am not too sure how this could even be possible as the door is really heavy and especially from he bottom where he would have had to lift if, it's really tricky to lift

I think there will have to be a lesson learned from tonight's adventures. The doors downstairs are to remain closed when we are not around. We had said that we wanted to be able to let him roam arou d the hall on his own anyway. We had almost said that most of the living room would be alright for him too the only bit that we wouldn't have wanted him to go in was under the TV as we didn't want him to be eating the wires. Perhaps this is just his way of saying that we had promised him he would have more space to roam when it came to the summer.

Anyway...my final comment on the little man is...

The little git! We thought that a pet tortoise would be easy!