Tooth or Consequences (Gerbil Style)

Some people think I'm kidding about this, but we have pet gerbils. Three of them: Swiper (the oldest), Rowdy and Chewie (brothers).

Earlier this week, Chewie fell off the couch or TV table. This has happened before; he's kind of stupid and sometimes misgauges his jumps and... accidents happen, no matter how hard you try to take care of them. I expect it's similar with human children, too.

His teeth got messed up (see below) and he was having trouble chewing (which is vital for a gerbil, because they have to grind down their ever-growing teeth), so yesterday I took him to the vet.


It was pretty stressful for him. I felt bad. He was fine until the examination, but then he freaked out at being held so tightly. Sometimes he'd escape from the vet and jump out of his hands, and I was afraid he'd fall off the table and onto the floor. Man, that would've sucked.

It's never fun seeing a pet get scared, and there's nothing you can really do about it. At least with a dog, you can comfort them and be like, "It's ok," but I don't think gerbils have that level of comprehension. He'd just scatter and desperately look for someplace to hide, and then get picked back up.

They decided to gas him (what?!) and grind down his lower teeth with a drill - that's supposed to be safer than just clipping them. So I was told to hang out in the waiting room while they did the mini-surgery, even though I wanted to watch.

(While examining his mouth, they used this light which illuminated his whole mouth, kind of like sticking a flashlight into your mouth and making your teeth glow. It was pretty neat, and Chewie didn't seem fazed by it at all. So I wanted to watch more gerbil surgery.)

So I hung around until the doctor called me in. I wish he had prefaced his speech with, "Chewie is all right. He didn't die," because his tone and the story made me think the worst had happened.

Instead, it was just something sort of bad that happened. Chewie had snapped out of his delirium, right in mid-grind, and he jumped out of the doctor's hand/whatever contraption they had him in. The drill cracked one of his upper teeth (it later either fell out or was cracked so high we can't see it), and cut his mouth, but at least the bleeding stopped. And so the vet decided to use the tooth-clipper (they got rid of 30-40% of his bottom teeth. That's a lot!) after all.

So Chewie was one-toothed, half-drugged, bleeding in da mouf, but alive. Really, the only thing that seemed to bother him was that his fur was wet (gerbils hate that!).

He's 30% lighter than his brother, which isn't good. I dunno if he's just been thin since the first accident, or if he's lost a lot of weight this past week, so I spent a lot of time this morning feeding him by hand. It's still hard for him to chew food, but I've made sure he swallows his seeds down. And he spends a lot of time sleeping, which isn't abnormal. They're pretty lazy.

I think he was staring wistfully at the toilet paper roll in his cage (they love chewing those things), but he didn't seem to be up for it. Just yet.

So get well, Chewie. You did good.