RIP Swiper Willson (2006 - 2009)

Earlier today we had to put Swiper to sleep, and as you can probably figure, euthanizing a pet is a ridiculously sucky experience.

(Just zooming through the necessary details: he'd been sick and was getting worse, might have had a stroke. First he had trouble walking, then staying awake, then eating. The rodent specialist at the hospital was away for most of the week and he saw us as soon as he could, but I don't think there was anything he could've done. Swiper was an old gerbil, after all, and they don't live forever.)

We resolved to be with him at the end, since I didn't want him to have to die all alone. Gerbils get scared so easily. By this point he was mostly unconscious, but he'd still squirm and kick whenever you'd pet him, because he kind of hated to be touched. Good ol' Swiper! However, he was always OK with me touching his paw with my finger, which I'd often do and pretend we were shaking hands.

So we petted him for a bit before they gave him the anesthetic, and I like to think in his delirium we felt like other gerbils grooming him, and that was somehow soothing. And then we thought the anesthetic killed him, but he resumed breathing. Swiper was nothing if not a fighter. And they let me hold his paw as they gave him the last injection, right into his heart, Jesus Christ, but he didn't even flinch, and that was it, he was finally free from the pain. His paws and nose, usually a nice gerbil-pink, turned gray far, far too quickly. He was so little, the poison must have spread so fast.

It wasn't fun leaving him with the hospital, but it would be weird carrying his body home, then illegally burying him in the park or something for some animal to dig up and eat and then die from the poison. The hospital knows what to do with the bodies, and Sarah thought it'd be nice for him to be with other animals, so at least he won't be alone for long.

The doctor saw me kissing his head before we left. He still smelled good. Gerbils have a very nice smell, even in death. And I tucked him under a tissue just so he wouldn't be lying there all exposed and undignified, and I wrote his name on it so they'd know he wasn't just any dead gerbil but someone who was really cool.

And... that was it.

But I'd like to celebrate Swiper's life, not dwell on his death, so here are a few of his greatest hits and (mostly unrelated) funniest pictures.


Swiper was the only one of the gerbils who seemed to enjoy getting in The Ball. Here's a blog entry from Jen365 in which Swiper appeared, and also this weird (unrelated) video featuring Too Many Balls.


Another great moment happened when we integrated all the gerbils together. For one week, they all lived in a single tank but were separated by a mesh fence, and then they chewed through the mesh so they could be together. That was very cute - they decided on their own that it was time to tear down the wall and live as a family.


Swiper was a master groomer. I guess his year of living alone gave him a newfound love of grooming, because, yeah buddy, he'd totally go at it for the other two. You could hear them squeak (usually a sound of pleasure or annoyance - but since they let him do it, it had to be pleasure) from across the room when he'd groom them, so it must've felt very good. I likened him to an old Asian masseuse who really knew what he was doing.


My personal favorite moment in Swiper's history: when we came home from my brother's wedding, and he scampered out of the kitchen to greet us. What a surprise! He'd broken out of his cage somehow, somewhen, and set up a habitat in the kitchen. Who knows for how many days or for how long, but it was a very surprising sight, and I think he was psyched to see us, so we could put him back in his cage.


And finally, the time Swiper tried really hard to get to the pistachios.


He had a good life, and I'm grateful for having known him. We'll miss you, Swiper.

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?

Let's Gerbilz!

So this weekend we moved the gerbilz into a new tank. Now instead of living separately (Chewie and Rowdy in their duplex next door to Swiper's lonely mansion), they'll be together in one big happy family!

As you can see, Rowdy loves it (and the camera). He's waving hi!


Nah, he's just scratching at the glass. That's one of their new favorite hobbies, the other being chewing/scratching at some tape that's in there. They're also partial to sleep.

It's a tricky thing, gerbilz. You have to acclimate them over the course of a week. So right now there's a screen splitting the tank down the middle, we keep 'em separated, and every few hours, we switch the side they're on so they get used to each others' scents. Then in seven days, they should be comfortable and won't fight. At which point they'll be ohana. Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind... or forgotten.

Anyway, you can receive updates about their very exciting lives on Rowdy's twitter.

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.