Let's Gerbilz! (II)

Integrating the gerbils hasn't been easy. A week-long process never is - you just want it to be over! But it's like hatching a dragon egg or making 40 pancakes, you gotta have patience.


But seriously, the prospect has been a bit daunting. They've settled into their sectioned tank pretty easily, and are content to live out their normal gerbil lives, but whenever we put Swiper with one of the boys, it never works out.

Things might be OK for a little bit, but then they'll keep following Swiper, smelling his butt and/or balls, and that obviously annoys the older gerbil, and pretty soon, they're scuffling.

If you've never seen gerbils fight (and I hope you never do), it's very cartoon-like in appearance, because they roll around in a quick ball, and you can practically see the dust flying and the little asterisks and curse marks. Also, though, it can get very bloody and deadly.

Very depressing. Maybe Swiper is too set in his bachelor ways, or the young'uns are too aggressive, but after a week, we didn't know what to do. Try for another seven days? Give up, send them back to their old houses? Kill Swiper (no)?

They say once they start sleeping next to each other, it's OK to remove the wire divider, but they always sleep on opposite ends of the cage. When we switch them over, they'll sleep in each other's nests, but that doesn't say much.

Also, leaving the apartment has always been a bit dangerous, because they spend most of their waking hours trying to escape - scratching at the glass, chewing at the divider, digging at the wire, trying to jump over the divider, digging under the divider - and it'd really suck to come home to find they'd broken through the border and someone got killed.

And, yesterday, that's exactly what happened... for the most part. Throughout the week they'd scratched a hole through the wire, which seems impossible, but never underestimate the power of a gerbil. And we'd tape it up, but they'd work on the tape, leading to constant re-taping. Once Swiper got stuck on the tape and that was weird and scary.

So we come home yesterday after an outing and the tape is down, the hole is bigger than ever... and everything is cool. They're still on their separate sides, all is fine in the gerbil world, but they now have access to each other.

So we're wondering, "What happened?" (A question we asked when we came back from Florida and found Swiper had escaped and was living underneath the refrigerator.) Did one poke through and did they fight and learn to respect each other? Or was it totally calm? After some discussion, we decided to lift the divider. And there was some hesitant sniffing of the balls, but then everyone settled down.

And it was a lot like a new roommate moving in. They gave Swiper his space, he gave them theirs, they'd check in every now and then, but then go back to eating/chewing/scratching at the glass. We watched them for a good five hours with no fights. A few tense moments, but all was resolved with the usual peeping and boxing/grooming.

The true sign, though, would be if they slept in a pile, and it didn't look like that would happen. As we sighed and went to sleep, each went to their separate corner. A little sad and a little funny, 'cause we could tell they were all very sleepy, but wouldn't go to bed. They were just too excited. And one would fall asleep but then the others would wake him up. It's like a little gerbil sleepover!

And in the morning we awoke to find a single sleeping pile of gerbils. They'd all slept together. They're family!

Who knew gerbils lead such interesting lives?