[Jaysephine86]

Originally Posted by mikatelyn

Smokey, a male Syrian, gets pretty riled up after an escape or even a hint of an escape. Usually he's a sweet hamster that I've been able to handle right from the pet store.
The few times he's managed a jailbreak I realized it pretty quickly and caught him within seconds. The longest he's ever been out of an authorized hamster area is about 20 minutes. He gets really zippy and I have trouble holding him after this happens, and when I put him back in his cage he's running all over the place, climbing up on his water bottle and the bars of the cage, sometimes he'll even start chewing the bars. Mind you, he's not a chewer, so it's really unusual for him to start biting the bars.
Usually he'll settle down after maybe 30-60 minutes of leaving him alone.
The time he was out for 20 minutes, he was more energetic for a few days afterwards, to the point where I was afraid he'd jump out of my hands when I went to pick him up out of the cage, so I'd put him in a cup and let him run around the bathtub to blow off some steam. That seems to help.

As far falling goes... Early on when I first got Smokey, he was probably about 3 months old. In the first couple of weeks I had a few episodes where I lost control of where he was while holding him, and he's had a couple of falls from a height of 1-4 feet onto tile. He always landed on his feet, he'd looked stunned for a second, then he'd try to make a run for it. Luckily I always scooped him up in time. I always watched him carefully afterwards, and he continued on eating, drinking, pooping, and scurrying around his cage without any problems.
None of these misadventures seem to have adversely affected him, and he's a very sweet and fairly tame hamster now.
Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for this, it is almost exactly what's happened with Alan and it was helpful to see your experience. I'm happy to report he is a lot better now; i think he was both very stressed and had a taste of freedom and the combined effect was confusion and agitation. He is lots better now but sadly has reverted to flinching when i go to pick him up. I think he'll calm down more though. Fingers crossed!