Gerbil "Escape from Alcatraz"

We are theorizing two things about the gerbils.

1. They think they are people and should not be penned in.
2. They watched "Escape from Alcatraz" late night a few times and were inspired.

 Anyways, the plain cardboard we had rigged to the top of their play pen was not working out any longer.  Both gerbils had learned the art of getting to the top of the cardboard - fortunately never at the same time.  One seems to have a quick method and the other was more methodical.  In either case, they were mere inches from having free roam of the house and all the delicious wood furniture.  We were fortunate to notice in time to recapture them.  They seem a little fearful of jumping down from their high position which helped us.  They did not go back without a "fight" though - they tried to go hide in an area in the corner which was hard to get to but in the end we got them.

Since this was not really how I wanted to spend my evenings, I decided to make a better "guard" for the top of the pen.  I had some thin luan plywood (5/32" ?) and some chunks of 1x2 lumber laying around the garage along with a box of 1 5/8" drywall screws.  That along with my table saw, miter saw, drill press and cordless drill and piece of sand paper and I had all I needed to better secure our talented and very gymnastic gerbils.

The basic idea was to:

• Cut the luan into strips roughly 4.5" x 60" on the table saw
• cut each luan strip into about 13" lengths (based it on the panels in the pen and made nearly the same length). 
• sand the edges of the luan a bit since it tends to splinter a lot
• Cut the 1x2 lumber into 2" length blocks.
• Pre-drill the 2" blocks through the small edge since they are prone to splitting with the drywall screws. I drilled 2 holes in each but only really needed 1 on the second inner piece. 
• Locate the first block on the edge of a luan rectangle and drill through original hole and the luan.  That allowed locating where to screw from the top.  Repeat that basic process for both blocks and the remaining screws.  I left about 1/8" gap between them for the fence. And just to note, I probably could have done things differently/faster (pre-drill and  locate hole from top of luan in one step but I didn't think about it until I had already done most of the blocks).

Below is a complete panel.

 

Here is my daughter placing a panel back on the fench.

 

And this is what the whole thing looks like afterwards.  The only real change I might make is rounding the corners of the panels.  I'll try and make time for that soon.

The gerbils tried it out tonight and so far were not able to effectively use their existing tricks.  I think it will make them try harder.  I'll start planning for the next tactic to keep them contained and safe.

Below is a video of what we were trying to prevent.

Enjoy!


[2016/02/02] aka, the day after.  Ok, so even though the overhang is pretty big - more than 3.5 inches, I found "Thumper" wandering around on top of the new wood panels when I went to check email.  I thought I had them.  Joke is on me. Now I need to find "the next level".  I'm going to have to setup a webcam or something to figure out how they are doing this now.