I thought that it would be nice to keep the gerbils familiar with our hands on days that we do not pick them up. So I stroked both of them gently while they were eating in the food dish. They feel so tiny and I was very careful to be gentle. It makes me feel big and clunky in comparison. I also stroked Gizmo’s tail while he was eating. I’m not sure if it’s just because we don’t have them, but I find it very interesting. They only seem to have control at the base of the tail, the rest of it just follows them around. I think it’s very funny when you can just see a little tail sticking up out of the teapot.

They went through another tube today, I’m not sure how we’ll keep up with them. I think maybe if I put the tubes together in interesting ways it may take them longer to destroy them. I glued three tubes together with non-toxic white craft glue. I am going to wait until tomorrow to give them it so that it has definitely dried.

Gizmo is certainly getting darker than he was. I had a search online and found that it is called ticking. It is showing now because he is moulting his baby coat and getting his grown up gerbil coat.

Drumming

Gnawing now seems to be one of their favoured activities, because their toilet roll had been chewed right through. They have also been gnawing the jingly ball too. I have taken it back out of the cage, because I’m not keen on them gnawing plastic. They can play with it in the wash tub.

We had another play with them in the wash tub. They are still quite hard to catch mainly because they are so fast. They seem to enjoy having a change of scenery though and some different toys to play with. It's funny, when they wee in the tub I wipe it up with tissue, apparently tissue is very interesting to gerbils, they want to get it. I think it may be because it seems like nice bedding. It does make it hard to wipe up their mess when they keep trying to grab the tissue.

Some new behaviour again today. Gadget started drumming with his back legs. I'm not sure why, I know that normally they do so when they are scared or as a warning. There wasn't any noticeable thing to scare them though, no loud noises or sudden movements. He kept going for some time, so I'm not sure if he just worked out he could do that. Perhaps he was claiming the cage? I'll watch out for it happening again, hopefully he wasn't scared, just practicing.

I gave them some apple today. This is one fresh food that they both seem to like. They had a good nibble before getting bored.

One other thing, looking at Gizmo, I think that he is getting darker in colour. I'll keep an eye on that, maybe it is to do with him growing up.