Today's rambling: Meaningless drivel
Written on February 08, 2002 at 8:54 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Forgot to tell my cute gerbil story! Well, it was cute to me, anyway....

I gave away 3 of my gerbils (Ophelia, Padma, and Hermione), but decided I wanted to keep Parvati because she was the one I'd nursed back to health when she was just a little baby. So Frank took me out to the pet store and I got a tank divider...I was planning on introducing Parvati to Chloe (so that way they each had company AND I would only need to take the one tank instead of two).

You're supposed to do the "split-cage introduction" for around two weeks, switching the gerbils to each side every few hours so that they can get used to the other's scent (because if you put them together immediately, they could fight and possibly kill each other).

Sometime during the night, I was awoken by the sound of squeaking, so I turned on the light and leaned over to look at the tank. Parvati had jumped over the divider, and she and Chloe were by turns sniffing each other, then chasing each other around the small enclosure. They weren't rolled into the "ball of death" (as gerbil owners call it), so I knew they didn't hate each other or anything. But Chloe was breathing really heavily so I decided to separate the two.

By the next day, they were sleeping next to each other, with only the divider separating them (so I knew things were going to work out well). Then last night, as I was transporting them over here to the apartment, Parvati jumped over the barrier again!

It took only a day for them to get used to each other, and now they sleep together and groom each other, just like happy gerbils are supposed to. I just thought it was too cute.

My next task is to introduce Sir Henry to Schitzy (as I've recently named him, due to his erratic behavior). I'd started to set everything up last night, but I needed a place to put some of my other fish 'til I got the 29-gallon aquarium set up again. So I had to use the divider to separate Hannibal's tank.

Hannibal is not happy with this arrangement. He spends half his time stalking his side of the divider, trying to get to those other fish. And when I turned the tank light on during the middle of the night, he was very vividly striped (whereas usually he's a light mud-colored brown with only the vaguest hints of stripes). So he's obviously an upset fish. Heh...and you thought fish had no feelings... ;)