Serene

Yesterday I took Serene to the vets and they couldn't really figure out what was wrong with her. They said that because Gerbils are so small that it is very hard to tell if there is a problem with one particular organ. They said she didn't seem to have a cold so they gave me some mass-spectrum anti-biotics to give to her twice a day until she gets better.

Well, unfortunately Serene passed away last night. I still don't know what was wrong with her but she wasn't acting like she was in any pain. I don't have a yard so I wasn't able to bury her so I had to take her to the vet and have them cremate her.

To be honest I wasn't really expecting her to make it. She seemed really sick and I couldn't get her to eat or drink. She also wasn't going to the bathroom. I'm happy she isn't sick anymore tho. 

We have a bit of a situation

I noticed yesterday that one of the brown twins, I think she's the one I named Serene, was dozing in a corner all by herself. I thought she was just being silly but today she was still sleeping away from all the others and she hadn't seemed to move much from yesterday. I'm not entirely certain that she has been eating and she looks kind of depressed.

I found a vet nearby that can look at her for me so I'm going to take her as well as the others into the vets tomorrow and get them looked at. I wanna make sure Serene is ok. The vet told me that the other Gerbil's may not have been letting her eat so I was told to seperate her from the others for now just in case. I have her in their old cage with her own food and water and she kind of laid down in the middle of the cage and wouldn't move. Now she's dozing in the wheel inside the cage.

The other thing that worried me was that I had a very easy tme picking her up. And after I had picked her up she just kinda laid in my hand and didn't move much. That is EXTREMELY abnormal. I haven't really done a good job conditioning them to human touch so whenever I try and pick them up they run away and after I catch them they try and jump out of my hands.

It may just be that she is overweight and is depressed because of it. I read the when gerbil's get fat they tend to become easily suceptable to depression as well.

I'll update tomorrow after the vet visit. 

Small Update
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Gackt

Yes, all the gerbils are fine.

They are alive and happy.

I was able to get them a new wheel which they enjoy tipping over...-sigh-

Today I introduced Serene to a confounding ball of plastic that she quickly found herself stuck in. She didn't do much while inside the plastic ball. I set her down on the floor by me while I did stuff on my computer and she mainly stayed over by me. I think I may have gotten a plastic ball that is too big for them. I might get a smaller one when I have the money to do so. (which is not now) We have not had any escapees since the last time I posted of one.

So yeah, just thought I should let you know. 

What I Have Learned Thus Far.

NO PLASTIC! ANYWHERE!!

-Ahem-

The main thing I have learned with keeping a gerbil (or four in this case) is if you want the things you get them to last a long time, you'd better get them in something other than plastic. Scratches has an attraction to the stuff that I can't explain. Anytime I get something plastic, she chews on it, even if there is a nice wooden item in her home with her. She'll go for the plastic before all else. She ruined the feeder I got for her and her babies, so I had to throw that out and replace it with a small ceramic bowl. About two days ago they broke their wheel that I bought them. Completely ripped it off of the stand it was on. So they are without a wheel and will be without one until I can afford something else for them to play with. So now all they have in their cage is a water-bottle, the ceramic bowl for food, thier fluff and their hut thing that has play-holes in it.

I fear they are going to be bored for a bit.

The Gerbil's have moved and I have another Picture!

Well, about two weeks ago my snail that was in my aquarium died. It was the last living thing in my aquarium, so I scooped it out and burried it in one of my potted plants in the hopes that it's decaying body would help fertilize the soil. Morbid yes?

Anyway, Canthor (not his real name btw), my fiance', suggested putting the gerbil's in the empty aquarium since it was bigger and they couldn't kick their fluff over the side of the cage and onto the carpet. So we cleaned out the aquarium, washed it out with a diluted water-vinegar solution and put the gerbils in the empty aquarium. I bought them a wheel the can run in and a wooden house they can sleep in. That way they can chew on it too and when it gets all used up I can get them a new one. They have a plastic feeder now too...which Scratches (stinky little thing that she is..) chewed a hole in so now it's pretty much useless. I'm going to have to get them a ceramic bowl and stick with that from now on. No more plastic things because Scratches will chew on them. Anyway, I have a picture of them sleeping in their little wooden hut.

 

As you can tell they've already chewed on it a bit.

I also have an update on Tarzan. (The male I had to give away) The girl who took him off my hands got him a buddy that she and her sister thought was a boy...but apparently was not because now they have a litter too. ^^' She said she and her sister got  another cage and have the mother and her litter in that cage, away from Tarzan.  I was under the impression that if the mom has some boy's they were going to put one in with Tarzan to keep him company.

 

BTW: Changed the typo in the name of this blog. Was "Gerbiil" now it is "Gerbil". 

Pictures w/Guest

Well, I must say, for these pictures the gerbils were very cooperative. We even have a special guest today. His name is Peachfuzz.

This is Peachfuzz. Out of the two cats my fiance' and I have, he is the most interested in the gerbils. Our other cat is too old/too lazy to bother with them.

Now for the pictures of the gerbils:

This is Scratches, the mother of the other three I own, for those of you that aren't familiar with them. She was very good at staying still while I took the picture of her.

The Golden one above is Twitchy. I named her Twitchy because she likes to jump out of people's hands...no matter how high above the ground she is at the time...-_-

 

This one is Serene (I think..><) she had just stopped running in her wheel to look at the big thing I was poking into her cage. (Aka, my camera lens)

 

This one is Star. (Short for Startled, because she is very nervous, and startles easily) At least, I think this one is Star. I have a very difficult time telling one from the other since there are no unique markings on one or the other. They only way I can tell them apart is if I'm holding them. Serene is very...well....serene when I hold her, she doesn't care one way or the other if I pick her up....Star on the other-hand...tries to run.

This was just a picture I had left over. I was trying to take a picture of the one in the back but twitchy wanted out of the cage. So in this picture she is attempting to sneak out.

 

Over-all I think these are the best pictures I've ever taken of my pets. They all turned out clear for the most part and some of them even have character. 

 

 

 

 

 

Now Playing: KT Tunstall

I know that I haven't updated this as I said I would, and I apoloize to those of you that actually read this.

The babies are now as big as their mother and for a while they enjoyed the luxury of having two cages, until they decided to chew around the "Toob" and make a hole that more chewing could allow them to get out. So now they are back to the one (bigger) cage. AND! I have finally named all of them. I decided on names about a week and a half ago when I broke my vacuum cleaner (No, the two events had nothing to do with one another, they just happened to occur on the same day.)

The names are as follows:

Scratches (The mother, fur color: black)

Twitchy (Fur color: Gold and white) Side note: Twitchy is very aptly named as I found out this weekend when I was cleaning their cages. They were in the bathtub and I tried to pick her up. I had one hand on either side of her and she was fine until she felt my hands touch her on both sides, then she jumped 3 inches into the air because she got startled.

Serene (Fur color: Brown with black flecks, one of a pair of twins)

Star (Fur color: Brown with black flecks, second of the twins) Star is short for "startled" by the way, because this gerbil is also very jumpy.

Twitchy has developed this curious little problem of missing some fur from her tail, like she (or someone else) has chewed some of the fur off of her tail. I'm not sure at this point what is causing it.

We had another little incident with the gerbils. They get themselves into lots of trouble given the chance. Unfortunately, I occasionally accidentally give them the chance. ^^'

A few weeks ago I was playing with them by putting my hands in their cage and letting them crawl into my hands if they chose to. I got up just for a moment, closed the cage door (but didn't snap it shut) and promptly got distracted by the T.V. I forgot about them until I saw movement out of the corner of my eye; Peachfuzz was on the table again looking at the Gerbil's I told him to get off the table and he didn't even flick an ear in my direction. That's when I was a gerbil run around behind him on the table. I jumped up and screamed at him to get off the table NOW and he got scared of the scary over-bearing lady and ran off, so then it was up to my fiance' and I to gather up the gerbils. They didn't want to be gathered. They were having fun running around on the table. We eventually got them all picked up and back in their cage. But I haven't forgotten to shut the cage door since, which is good.

If I can get good pictures of them I'll post them. I haven't taken any pictures in a while.

I found a solution, and I have pictures.

Shortly after posting my last post I thought of another solution to my problem. So I made a last ditch effort and I posted a notice on the board that my Fiance's group has on Yahoo that I had two gerbil's to give away.

By friday I hadn't gotten a response yet so I took the gerbils into the bathroom so that I could pick the boy and the girl I couldn't keep and put them in the carrier to take to petco.  As I was playing with them my phone rang; it was one of the girls from my Fiance's group. Apparently her sister wanted to have the boy gerbil. So on Saturday I met her at the park and gave her the little boy. The girl I decided I could keep after all.  But, because I now have four gerbil's instead of one I decided they needed a bigger cage. So I went to petco today to get them a new cage and to get some food for both them and my cats. 

This is what they were in before:

And this is what they are in now, only the one I bought is all pink since it supports the breast cancer foundation:

 

This one gives them more room to move around, and the toob that is shown above (yellow) doesn't stick out so Scratches won't be tempted to chew on it. This is what she did to the other one:

Sorry, it's kind of blurry. But if you'll look above to the first picture you can see which piece this was.

The only (two) downside(s) to this new cage is they don't have a den to sleep in (I had to make them one out of a tupperware container) and it has more of a cage aspect to it than a tank aspect. As you can see there are bars, and while Scratches can't fit through them, her bedding can. So of course there are little bits of bedding on my carpet where she got over enthusiastic in her digging. O.o

Now, here are some more pictures:

This is Scratches and two of her babies sniffing while they are in the bathtub. 

This is the golden one. I haven't decided whether to name her Sunny, Sunshine, or Twitchy yet.

Here are all the babies together. I put the "ramp" there because I didn't know if they could get out and back in by themselves. Turns out they can.

And this is Scratches digging.You can see one of her babies tails poking out from underneath the "ramp" where it decided to hide.

I think that's about it for the pictures.

 

And on a final note, I caught the golden baby sleeping in the toob in their new cage. It was kinda cute. 

 

 

It's almost time....I think ><

Well, it's almost time for me to give the babies away to petco....but I don't know if I want to anymore. >< I have until Friday to decide and then on Saturday I have to give them away.

I still haven't made up my mind on how to do it though. I have a few scenarios in my mind at the moment.

1.) I keep two girls and give the boy and the third girl away. The only downside to this is the boy and the girl will be left alone and will probably live out their lives in solitude, unless the person who purchases them has other gerbils at home.

2.) I keep one girl and give two girls and the one boy away. Downside: The boy will be alone.

3.) I keep all of them, but put the boy in a seperate tank so that he doesn't try to mate with his siblings. Downside: I'd have to buy a seperate tank, which could range about 30-40 dollars. I would have to find somewhere to put the new tank. Right now I don't think I can afford that.

4.) I keep all of them, but I buy a seperate tank for the boy but connect the two tanks with a divider in the toob connecting the two so that the boy and the girls can sniff each other but can't mate. Downside: All of the downsides named above, plus I don't know if it would be cruel not to allow the girls to groom their brother.

So basically, I'm left with whether to give away one or two girls.

Originally I was going to have two Gerbils, one for me and one for my fiance'. Although, I think my fiance would have prefeered a hamster. ><; Although I will admit, the fancy dwarf hamsters are very...very cute. ^^;

The only thing I'm really worried about are "what if" scenarios. For example:

What if the person who buys the babies looses them in a couch and they die in there? I don't want them to die in a couch.

What if they are given to a child who steps on them or is cruel to them?

What if they are bought because some stupid teenager (or otherwise) wants to feed them to his snake?

What if they aren't taken good care of?

What if someone grabs them by the tail and their tails break?

 

See?

Anyway, moving on.

I have decided the best way to interact with the gerbils is to let them out in the bathtub because they can't escape. It's too slippery. AND they can dig in corners to their hearts content. Ocasionally, they'll roll in the corners too. Although Scratches has tried to jump out of the tub but she always end up sliding down the side. Her little golden daughter tried to emulate her too. But she slid down the side as well. ^^;

On friday or saturday I think we made a big improvement. ^^ I set my hand down in the bathtub for a bit and the babies crawled on my hand and partway up my arm before they'd get scared and jumped off. Although Scratches was trying to bite me more often than not. The most amusing point in all of this was when the little boy (who I have aptly nicknamed Tarzan) shimmied his way up my arm and onto my shoulder, sniffed my ear and then tried to climb onto my head meanwhile, my hand was still in the bathtub so Scratches felt it would be a good time to try and wriggle her way up my sleeve. When you have one Gerbil sticking it's whiskers in your ear while the other one is trying to shove itself into your skin-tight sleeve it's quite hard not to twitch and laugh so hard the gerbil trying to climb onto your head doesn't get knocked off onto the ground. ^^'

I have pictures on my camera but since I'm at work at the moment I can't upload them. I may be able to when I get home though.

Here are the pictures I promised:

This is a picture of two of the girls in the carrier before their eyes opened.

And here is a picture I took last night with three of the four babies eating with their mom.