Oh My God, It's Full Of Gerbils

[major_clanger]

We have gerbils. Two of them, Ben and Jerry. When we bought them back in April, we made sure to check with the pet shop that they were both male.

"We're pretty sure they are" they said... but there was that little disclaimer on the receipt stating that We Cannot Guarantee The Sex Of Small Rodents.

But Ben and Jerry settled in, and seemed like happy little boys, albeit with a habit of trying to shag one another now and again (although with hindsight it was only ever Ben trying to shag Jerry). But Stan and Cartman, our previous gerbils, had been a bit, er, gay at times, so we didn't think too much of it.

Then this morning I went to give them some more cardboard to chew, and noticed that Ben was at one end of the tank, Jerry was in the middle... and there was wriggling in their nest at the other end.

For a second I wondered if something had got into the tank. I had heard stories from friends of housemice getting into hamster cages to steal food, but (a) we don't suffer from mice, and (b) it's hard to see how they could get into a fishtank like the one we keep gerbils in. (Tanks are much easier to clean than cages, and the little sods can't kick bedding all over the floor). My second thought was a panicked worry that we had some sort of hideous infestation of Giant Cardboard Shredding Maggots, caused by poor hygiene. Except that there's no such thing, and we change the bedding regularly.

I tentatively scooped aside some of the bedding and peered in.

We had about ten tiny little baby gerbils. Evidently Ben is not gay, and Jerry is not a little boy gerbil after all. And all of a sudden she wasn't anything like as fat as she had been getting recently, either.

Just now they're about an inch long, pink, hairless and wriggly, with little tiny paws and tails. The pet shop have kindly offered to take them off our hands when they get to a couple of months old, but if anyone out there is desperately short of a little furry friend we may well be able to help out soon.

Mind you, don't ask us to tell you if you're getting a boy or a girl. After all, We Cannot Guarantee The Sex Of Small Rodents.

MC

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with giving pets insufficiently gendered names like Jerry. Without a proper role model who knows what they'll do! Now you have an unmarried mother on your hands, social services will be calling, and the CSA will be looking for the father.

When will these rodents learn!

Hope they're doing well!

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Yes, Jerry the gerbil has turned out to be more a Jerry Hall than a Jerry Lee Lewis!

Bug

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Well, Ben isn't having a lot of luck at being an absentee father... indeed, given the confines of the tank he hasn't been more than a metre from mother and children since they were born!

However, we have caught him standing to one side looking rather confused and alarmed at times.

MC

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Heh! And I was convinced that a Clanger would have a Major head-start in sexing small rodents, being... not entirely unrelated, taxonomically? Perhaps you should have asked Mother Clanger, Grannie Clanger and the Clanger Aunts for advice before it was too late????

:-)