Bringing them Home

We brought Gadget and Gizmo back to our house today, after staying at my parent's house yesterday. We took out the food dish and water bottle for the car journey, but left them some food incase they were hungry. They spend the journey safely on my lap in their travelling cage.

When we arrived we left them to settle down while we prepared their proper home. We covered the bottom of the cage with woodshavings and then shredded paper. When we had set it up we let them in to explore.

Gadget was the first to explore everywhere, Gizmo chose to stay close to shelter behind the wheel. Gadget ran around all of downstairs and plucked up the courage to run up the tube to upstairs. It was getting down that was the problem, he sniffed over the edge and the top of the tube several times before choosing to jump over the edge! He must have decided that this wasn't the best way down, because when he ran up again a few minutes later he chose to climb back down the tube. After the first journey down the tube he was happy to zoom up and down as he pleased. Gizmo was much shyer and did not decide to go upstairs.

I was pleased to see that both of them used the water bottle today. Something else that we noticed both today and yesterday was that Gadget climbs straight onto your hand when you put it in the cage. Gizmo is more tentative, but he does come over to sniff you. This certainly seems useful for taming them.

I gave them some broccoli stalk as fresh food, they nibbled it a little but didn't seem highly impressed.

I decided that they could do with a bed in their cage, and though of a perfect object to use. I had bought a teapot to use at work, but found that it was useless at pouring out. I hadn't wanted to throw it away and was intending to use it as a plant pot. This would make a suitable bed for the gerbils. I put some paper in it for them and placed it in the corner of the cage, with the spout as a stabiliser.

The boys seemed to decide that this wasn't their type of bed, because they promptly pulled out almost all of the paper and used the smooth surface to run on like a wheel. They also made a rather impressive tunnel round the back of the teapot. You can see this where there is less paper in the photograph.

The gerbils made a bed for themselves underneath the green tube instead. They gathered lots of the paper and cuddled up It was fairly sheltered and they seemed happy.