It’s a Gerbil Xmas, Charlie Brown

12/11/07


As I may have mentioned in a previous post, Hanni and I procured a couple of gerbils after my goldfish, Mr. Tickles, went fins-up. Through the ignorance of myself and the pet store employee (though, to be fair, pets aren’t my fucking business) we did not end up with two males as previously thought, but a male and a female. Our first clue came when puberty descended on the male like an Acme safe. It looks like he’s carrying two hairy lima beans down there. Naturally, our house turned into a sort of incestuous gerbil-porn-show for a few days. ‘Cause, y’know, their brother and sister. The sounds of Barry White, banjo music and squeaking nigh drove us to madness. If images of freakish, inbred, flipper-baby gerbils are playing through your head, don’t fear. Provided our guys weren’t terribly inbred already (and they showed no obvious genetic defects to believe this) it’s highly unlikely incest of this nature would result in genetic monsters. Good news, Alabama! Long story short, last Friday the gerbils we named Alexander and Hamilton used the latter’s vagina like a log-flume and out came seven tiny, pink and distinctly alien-esque babies.

This is the pups at one day old. See that white part of the stomach? That’s actually milk; their skin is so thin you can see right through it.

Yes, we have handled the babies, and no, she didn’t eat any of them. That’s only common in hamsters; gerbils should be fine with your smell on their tots. The only times a mother will eat her babies is if there is no water available, if they smell of something truly bizarre like an unfamiliar gerbil, or if one dies. The father’s cool, too. Apparently gerbil fathers watched a lot of Leave It to Beaver, because their fairly attentive parents.

The really troubling thing is that Hamilton is almost certainly preggers again. You see, gerbils mate right after the litter is born, and the embryos are implanted after she’s finished breast-feeding. So, in about 40 days, we will have another swarm of pink science-fiction creatures.

We have six pups that will almost certainly be black like the parents, and this one guy here who we think will be blond…or albino…I don’t even know if gerbils can be albino. It will almost certainly have pink eyes, which is visible through the skin. I’m pretty sure it’s a lab rat pretending to be a gerbil. Clearly Hamilton is a tawdry whore.

Dude. Gerbil 69. Nasty:

We are now in the uncomfortable position of either separating Alex and Hamilton and keeping him with one son and her with a daughter (they must be kept in pairs) or enduring the laughter and ridicule of several veterinary professionals until we find one who will neuter a tiny rodent.