More Gender Identity Problems!

Some readers will remember a mix up when we got our kittens. We thought that we had a male and a female. It then turned out that we had two male kittens. It was what we wanted anyway, but were a little abashed at not being able to tell the difference.

Our powers of observation have failed us again. This time with the gerbils. At Christmas George was given a lovely gerbil cage with lots of coloured tubes and groovy things in which gerbils can live out their lives. With that he was given two little gerbils, a black one named Hendrix and a white one named Cobain. We were assured that they were two male gerbils and we never really questioned it (or looked very hard).

Well on Sunday when George and The Man of the Place went to clean the gerbil cage, they discovered something surprising, baby gerbils!!! There was a nest with five pink, hairless gerbil pups in it.

It is obvious that Hendrix is the mother of these pups. There is no point in changing her name at this late stage. Big Daddy Cobain (shown above) has been annexed to a new cage that was hastily purchased this afternoon. I hope that we have prevented further pregnancies. From what I've read, gerbils copulate almost immediately after giving birth.