Having spent the morning watching Sesame Street and a short video with Michael, I decided to check e-mail, briefly.  Yesterday I did not get on the internet all day long, and figured I should at least root out all the junk mail from 2 days worth of time.  After that, I checked my tag board, and was visiting other people's journals, who had visited mine since I last looked.  Only 2.  While I was at the first of those, I heard a strange noise and went to check on Michael.  He was in his room.  Words alone cannot convey...

He had opened one of the gerbil's cages and had grabbed handfuls of aspen shavings, along with clean tissue paper that I had provided for them to make a bed out of (they shred it).  Also, I had given each gerbil an old sock that had holes in it.  (Who darns socks anymore?)  So that was in there too, also shredded.  Michael looked up at me with a gleeful face, shavings and such matted into his hair (they are still there... very hard to pick out!), and shavings everywhere, as far as the eye could see.  I was furious, to say the least.  Michael's toys are not kept in a toy box, where they could easily be forgotten about... no.  They are on bookcases.  Nice bookcases.  Shavings were mixed in with all his toys.  Stuffed animals.  A gazillion Fisher-Price Little People and all their gear.  Shelves and shelves.  16 in all, to be exact.  To teach him to take some responsibility for his actions, I made him help clean up.  We had to empty the shelves, vacuum most of the toys, vacuum the shelves, the rug, the windowsill.  When that was all done, we moved the bookcases and found at least 2 more cupfuls of the stuff behind them.  I was not a happy camper, to say the least.  I told Michael I don't think he needs anymore toys for the upcoming holidays, I was so angry.  His bedroom looks like a toy store.  I removed the gerbil cages from his bedroom and locked them in our bedroom.  Not sure where they will be overnight, but except for when we are all leaving the house, they won't be back in Michael's bedroom.