[emileenoland]

Hi,

I'm a new hamster owner and i got my male syrian almost two weeks ago now. I am really hoping to get some advice on my current situation as I had an incident yesterday morning where I think I really scared my hamster. When I woke up in the morning, I heard some scratching in the corner of my room and I pulled back some boxes to find my hamster in the corner of my bedroom, escaped from his cage. Naturally, I panicked and started screaming and he started running around my room doing backflips. I ended up catching him in a box and leaving him in there for a while whilst I tried to figure out how he had escaped his cage as I had left all the doors shut- this is still a mystery to me. When I put him back in his cage- he seemed to be in shock and was having what looked like small fits. He would run around his cage frantically, banging into things, backflipping and throwing himself all over his cage into everything. I was really worried but i thought it would be best to leave him as I didn't want to disturb him any further. It is now the next day and he has blocked the entrances to his tubes with bedding and food, and he is only coming out for water in the early hours of the morning when I'm in bed.

I have just bought him some yogurt drops as treats, so that I can hand feed them in order to try and re-build his trust, but I am not sure how long I should leave him alone now due to him being very scared by me yesterday. I would also like to add that in the previous two weeks before the incident, I had been unable to truly hold my hamster as he would bite my hand whenever I would lay it flat in his cage- trying to let him smell me- and he drew blood from my boyfriends hand last week.

I hope that someone can give me some advice on what to do,
Thank you very much,
Emilee