Two week-old pups.

About Us or Why Gerbils?

Why gerbils?  To answer that question, we must go back to Thanksgiving 2006.  My son’s classroom pet, a rabbit named Chai, needed a home for the long weekend.  Being the dedicated parent that I am, I volunteered our house and services for the five days Chai required care.  Wednesday afternoon, the teacher cleaned out the cage, dragged out the shavings, bagged up his chow, water dispenser and food bowl then carefully loaded Chai into his travel cage.  His care instructions for the weekend weren’t complicated: cover the bottom of his cage with shavings, check his water and food dish daily, and empty his litter pan when it smells bad.  OK, we can handle that.

What we couldn’t handle was the pleading for a pet that came from our children the moment Chai entered the house.  We fondly remembered the wonderful cat we had for 12 years who died three years earlier so the idea of a pet was not foreign.  (Our daughter reminded us every few months that she missed our beloved feline.)  The kids were old enough that caring for a pet would be possible, but not old enough to be solely responsible.  So, if we were going to get a pet, it had to be one my husband and I could tolerate.  I am allergic to dogs and several of our family members are allergic to cats, so the obvious American pet choices were not options.  Besides, a pet that lived in a contained area was very appealing for the household cleanliness factor.  After much research, we determined rabbits were a “no go” for many reasons – most of them having to do with the seemingly endless list of potential causes of death.  A friend ours had a guinea pig, but he hid in his hut most of the time and was quite costly to obtain.  That fact also ruled out several other critters.  I’m not into live food, so lizards and snakes were out.  Turtles carry disease.  Rats and mice… I couldn’t get past the vermin factor.  Hamsters while cute, cuddly and familiar from my youth were discovered to be nocturnal, which validated my recollections of Scooter sleeping all day and running on the squeaky wheel all night.  My husband’s childhood rodent of choice was gerbils, which lead us back to the research stage.  We found gerbils to be highly compatible with our pet requirements: contained habitat, very social and awake during the day, hardy on the health front and relatively inexpensive.  We also discovered that since they are desert creatures, they aren’t heavy urinators so their smell factor is pretty low – big bonus!  So gerbils sounded like the perfect pet for us.

Great!  It was a few weeks before Christmas, so we thought pet gerbils would make for a great surprise.  We stuck to the basics to get our habitat started: an aquarium with bedding shavings, a food dish, a water bottle and a wheel.  Now all we needed were the gerbils.  No problem!  We both remembered them at every pet store in our youth.  Little did we know how trendy gerbil ownership was back then.  Nowadays, hamsters and mice are all the rage.  Needless to say, there were no gerbils for Christmas.  We wrapped up the empty tank and promised to fill it with a gerbil a piece as soon as we could find some.  (Since gerbils are such social animals, they need companionship to thrive so two would be perfect.)  Back to the internet we went to find a breeder.  Fortunately, we found one within an hour drive and by the end of February; we were the proud owners of the most beautiful male gerbil pups we had ever seen.

The kids were ecstatic and, I must admit, we were excited too.  Hyla and Cherry were wonderful additions to our family.  We have been very happy together.  They are very people friendly, inquisitive and energetic.  Their antics are a joy to watch – the kids will even sit in front of the cage and giggle as they run on their wheel together.  Watching them roll around the room in their gerbil balls is a hoot as well.  It’s like watching bumper-cars from the midway without the loud carnival music.  They really get those things rolling at a surprisingly fast clip for such small critters!  Digging in the sand is one of my favorite activities to observe.  It is amazing how quickly they can move ten-times their body size volume of sand from one place to another.

As you may have guessed, we’ve since expanded on the basic habitat with the addition of plastic gerbil balls for much needed exercise, a tank of sand for bathing and digging, and a wire high rise which provides much more room on multiple levels for their sanity.  Being desert critters, they need their sand and their space.  We’ve had so much fun that in November I expanded our gerbil family as well, with two female gerbils.  After a week of very carefully orchestrated introductions, I established two breeding pairs, each with their first litter in December 2007.  While the kids still hold claim to their initial two pets, I have moved into the ‘big cheese’ role since the females came onto the scene.  Breeding gerbils is a large responsibility that requires knowledge and resources.  I have worked pretty hard to gain both and feel that I’ve done OK.  Our gerbils have really added to our lives.  And that’s why gerbils.