I'm certain it was a hamster. We put it in this huge fish-tank we'd had for ages, so it had like 7ft by 3ft to roam around in. And it wasn't any pissy little Russian hamster, it was a long-haired something. I'm not at all surprised it lived as long as it did. When we first bought it, on the way home in the card, it chewed clean through the hard-board box we were using to take it home in, and escaped onto the car floor.
I had a hamster waaay before that, that used to climb along the roof of it's cage, swing, and kick the little door open, then run off around the house. And a little after the other one, I had a hamster that kept escaping (no idea how) and running in behind the gas-fire where it would hide for 3 or 4 days, feeding off the food it had stored in it's pouches. Most times we had to remove about 4 layers of metal-frame and panelling to get in to the chimney and catch the little f*cker. It'd go in cream and come out 3 days later completely black.
