Thursday, 12 February 2009

New tube toy

The gerbils had a mad half hour today, zooming around, interested in everything. They seem to be active in bursts and then need to have a sleep. I remember reading that gerbils behave like this, but I have seen it for myself.

I constructed a new tube toy for them today. It consists of a suspended toilet roll tube held up by two strings attached to the top of the cage. Well it did, it now only has one string. While there were two strings both Gadget and Gizmo climbed through the tube. The photo is the only one that I got of one of them in it, so please excuse the bars. Gadget was first to do so, as you may have guessed.

It was Gizmo who chewed through one of the strings though. He just stood on his back legs and chewed until he got through it. You can see him carrying on chewing the now severed string in the photo.

Gadget came to have a chew too, and while he was busy Gizmo found something that looked like string and decided to chew it. Unfortunately it was Gadget's tail! He squeaked and Gizmo soon stopped, I would have thought he would know the difference. The picture shows the moment about to happen, I didn't realise at the time what Gizmo was thinking but it looks pretty clear here.

Now it is much harder for them to get in, because the tube moves around more. It is also hard for them to chew the other string, for the same reason. It is fun to think of new toys for them to play with, and hopefully fun for them to investigate and play with them.

I gave them some broccoli today, they seemed to like it. They were more interested in the top part than the stem. Something else I noticed today is that they have excavated some of their paper ramp that leads up to the teapot, around by the spout. They seem to like going behind the teapot.

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