Monday, May 21, 2007

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.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh you're a grandma! Be careful, I've heard that the young'uns can start making more babies fairly young.

Betty said...

My daughter had a gerbil that she named Bernie. Armed with a reference book, we set out to determine Bernie's sex. We spread-eagled him on our dining room table and gave him a close examination. Turns out, she had to change the name to Bernice.

Jay said...

What are you going to do with all those gerbils now?

Anonymous said...

jay just asked the question that came to my lips! Didn't you get more gerbils than you bargained for? ;)

Peggy said...

Susan - I'm sure we're safe as the pups eyes aren't open yet.

Betty - Sure, we know NOW what sex they are. We're not going to change any names at this point.

Jay - I have no idea. Want a gerbil?

Claude - We now have SEVEN gerbils when we only wanted two!

J-Funk said...

oh my! that's a lot of gerbils!!

Eryn said...

Heh Heh. That's pretty funny. May I suggest letting the kittens play with them? ;)

Tink said...

I once ended up with 100 mice (literally) because of the same mishap. Be sure to pull the babies apart when they get of breeding age too. Otherwise you'll find them multiplying at an alarming rate.

Shammickite said...

ooooo those babes are SOOO TIIIINY!
So what's the next step.... Gerbil Pie? better fatten them up a bit first.

Joy Des Jardins said...

Congratulations Grandma...and Good Luck on trying to prevent from becoming one again so soon. Those little critters are mighty productive.