If you read here every day, you know that our hamster died on Friday.  Jordan has a video “tribute” to Hammie on his blog.  Go leave him some love.  He hasn’t posted a video in awhile.  He needs to get back to doing that!

So, the kids talked me into taking them to the pet shop yesterday.

Jordan wanted a mouse.  I told him I don’t do mice.  Not at all.  I told him people put traps in their house to take the mice out, not invite them into the house.  (I know, I know many people have mice as pets. I’m not one of them.) No mouse.  So then he says, how about a rat? I think I paled at the thought of a rat because he laughed at me.  Again, I know rats can make great pets.  I know they are highly intelligent animals. I can’t do it.  I have done it.  I’ve lived with a rat.  No, not one of my ex-boyfriends, a real rat named Conan.  He was my roommate’s rat.  He was really nice and really smart, but I wouldn’t touch him.  Poor Conan died of rat cancer.  Even though he was nice, I still don’t do rats.   So I put down the rules.

Nothing with a naked tail and nothing that won’t fit in the cage we have now.

So, we went and looked at the gerbils. You know, gerbils kind of look like mini-rats. The tails kind of creeped me out.  I did specify no naked tails, not no tails period. And have you ever seen the back feet on a gerbil?  I always thought they were like little hamsters with tails.  Not so, they really look quite different.  My kids  were looking at a black gerbil and the sales guy took her out of the cage and handed her to Jordan. Mean little booger. She got Jordan with her nails twice, then bit him.  Hard enough that the blood was dripping, not just a little scrape.  That made me nervous about the disposition on gerbils.  He asked to see the white one.

She was sweet.  She didn’t bite or claw or anything.

She came home with us.

I’ve even held her.  She didn’t mind at all.  I’m kind of mad at the sales dude though.  While reading all I could find online about gerbils so that I could be a good gerbil mommy, I found out that picking them up by their tails is a big no no.  You could really hurt them that way. How was he taking the gerbils out of their aquariums?  By their tails.  You mister Pet Smart guy should know better than that.  I do know better than buying animals from a pet store.  I should go to a reputable breeder or to the rescue league.  I’m kind of feeling guilty now.  But, I also kind of feel like we “rescued” a pet store animal who could have had her tail broke by Mr Sales Associate who didn’t know how to handle a gerbil.

Here is the newest member of our family, Snowball.

(Don’t mind that the pictures suck. It’s not easy getting a picture of an animal that is constantly on the move. I think she moves faster than Hammie did.  Plus, she’s white, the flash bounces off of her. I had to use the flash because without it, the cage was too shadowy for a good picture.)

and Snowball’s neighbor Huck, named after Huckleberry Pie of the Strawberry Shortcake family, – (same problem with the pictures)

So that’s our little animal family.  They are kind of sweet.  I think I love them.  Huck is more mine.  I haven’t trained him well yet, but I’m trying.  The kids like Huck, but not as much as the little furry rodents because they can’t take him out to play with him yet.

I did do good with Huck when we got him.  I got him from a lady who had to get rid of her parakeets on ReUseIt, which is similar to Freecycle. Our group switched from Freecycle to ReUseIt because they felt Freecyle was getting a little too much cooperation like for their tastes. Here’s the story of bringing Huck home, and almost burning down our kitchen, and it has a better picture of Huck in that post. It’s actually a short story, but if you want to know more about Huck, that’s where you find him.

I wondered if I moved Jesus (he stands between the two cages at our house) and put the cages together if Huck and Snowball would be friends? Pato said no, they’d fight.  What do you think?  Do you think they’d keep each other company through the bars? Or would they find a way to fight like my kids do even when I separate them?  I just thought since we have 2 animals that are actually animals that you keep in pairs if they’d keep each other from getting lonely if they were right together and were able to see each other.  An experiment to try today I think.

Have a great day!

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

No related posts.

3 Responses to “”

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email (required) (not shown)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

You can add a link to follow you on twitter if you put your username in this box.
Only needs to be added once (unless you change your username). No http or @ Twitter