Know that many, many people are pulling for you and Alice. I hope those are *tears* of being touched by all those who wish you well and your nightmare to be over, and to be reunited with with that rascal *runaway.*
Much love,
Daffy
Some of them are.
I’m feeling really unworthy of all this, really.
I am gobsmacked by the outpouring of love and concern.
On the upside, hubby didn’t murder me after I ripped all the drywall off the log wall on the steps going upstairs.
I took Peggy out of her house and she, being about Alice’s size and general disposition, used her for an experiment.
I set her on the bottom step and watched what she did.
It was slow going and she wasn’t especially happy to be moving away from me but she did indeed climb those steps.
She seemed to be drawn to the hole in the drywall halfway up.
So I put her away and took the flashlight and peered in to see where it went.
There’s no easy up/down place for him to have gone but there was a nice horizontal tunnel that ended where the floor of the upstairs and the ceiling of the downstairs meet, creating several hundred square feet of crawlspace between the two, possibly limited by the fact that 2 x 4s are also up there 16” apart so he may just be in a relatively small area.
I have a snake tub with heat, water, one of his snake “caves” and a tasty mouse screwed to the wall in hopes that the air flow will let the odors and warmth somehow permeate the space between floor/ceiling.
Little does hubby know I’m sorely tempted to rip out the drywall of the ceilings.
It’d be messy but when it was done, I’d have my cool whitewashed pine board/beam ceiling back...and maybe my snake, too.
I have no idea if that’s where is or whether it will work but at least I’m *doing something* other than what hasn’t worked so far.