Meet Our New Family Members!

I can't believe I haven't written about this yet! One of my pseudo-birthday presents to myself was gerbils! A friend of mine bought what she THOUGHT was two males from the pet store, until they had six babies. They do best in pairs, so my friend offered us two of them.

So now, meet Peter:


and Paul:

Miriam suggested the names, and I applied them. Paul used to be golden, and then changed into this browny mix -- he had a conversion, you might say. (yuk yuk yuk) He's the more social and exploratory of the two. Peter is a little more skittish. They're both very sweet.

So, what are gerbils, you ask? They're little rodents, between mice and rats in size. They have long hairy tails with little tufts on the end. They love digging (which is why they live in an aquarium instead of a wire cage) and chewing.

You should see this wooden house now -- all the openings have been somewhat enlarged, and the corners rounded. For toys we give them toilet paper tubes, and cardboard boxes for houses. (Amazon makes the PERFECT sized boxes.) They used to have a wheel, but chewed it into little bits in less than a week.

They're extremely social animals, which is what makes them such great pets for kids -- they don't bite (at least on purpose -- we've experienced a couple exploratory nibbles, though). They love sleeping in little furry heaps.


The girls take care of them every day -- Miriam is in charge of the water bottle, and Katie is in charge of food. I change their litter about once a week. (Another advantage -- they don't really have an odor -- you have to get up right next to their cage before you can even smell their little animally smell.) They've been a lot of fun -- very cute, very low maintenance. The ideal first pet! Their lifespan is about 2-3 years I think, so maybe when the Peter & Paul era is at an end, after a decent mourning period we can graduate to bigger game (like a bunny! ...please?).