I had a black one, #5, and a white one, #7 (named in order of acquisition, since I'm horrifically uncreative when it comes to pet names). I made sure to only get male gerbils, since otherwise I'd be mayor of Gerbil City. When I got 7, I had a sneaking suspicion he was female. The pet shop guy seemed as reliable as a crepe paper seat belt. He pulled 7 out of a big bin o' gerbils, gave an obligatory look at the belly, and pronounced him male. I figured the odds were about 50/50 he was dead wrong. But I bought 7 anyway.
Just a few hours after dropping 7 in the tank with 5, 7 began to stomp his feet. I looked it up in both of the gerbil care books I have, and it was a mating dance. A male mating dance. So 7's definitely a male (phew), and is either as ill-informed as I am regarding gerbil gender, or practicing the love that dare not squeak its name.
7 seemed to grow a bit over the next few weeks. Day by day, you don't really notice something gaining weight, so I thought 7 was just enjoying the increased access to the food dish. 5 stayed the same size, while 7 slowly doubled, all in the stomach.
One night after work, I heard cheeping. The gerbils were usually silent, but there were cheeps, like baby birds. I checked in the cage, and mulch had been piled in a corner with 7 on top of it. I gave a good stare, and 7 moved. Something red and scary squirmed underneath. What the hell was that?
As I'm sure everyone guessed several paragraphs ago, it was a gerbil baby. Pup, to be technical. Six, to be mathematical. 8 through 13, to be consistant with the names. They were squished together in their little nest, wriggling like second graders in the big parachute they brought out at gym class. Five were beet red, the other one was black.
I showed 7 my gerbil care books, pointing out to HER that SHE was dancing like a man. She didn't seem to care. Damn illiterate gerbils.
The kids were jellybeans with legs. They were blind, hairless, toothless, and their limbs were just a few millimeters long. It couldn't even be said that their eyes were closed: a thin layer of skin was over black nubbins that would eventually be eyes. Their eyes weren't even formed.
They were cute, of course. I secretly wanted to have them. That's why I took the word of someone who was probably operating a cock fighting ring in the basement: passive aggressiveness in action. I wanted a puppy and kitten and grizzly bear cub and babies of all other animals, but didn't want the responsibility that went with them. Gerbils are as low maintenance as you get: five minutes of work a week is all it takes. Adding babies doesn't add any maintenance time to the tank, but it greatly increases the cuteness factor of said tank.
My gerbil books gave me their growth cycle, which I still consulted despite at least one factual error per book. Hair grows at six days, and the eyes open at 10-12 days. They're weaned for about 21 days, until they start eating solid food. At nine to ten weeks, they become sexually mature. I was going to have two months of fun watching the little guys sprout hair and eyeballs, but then they'd have to go. Pawning the little kids off to someone else, that was what I really didn't want to do. But now I'd have to.
75% grew to maturity, on average. Some gerbils have genetic problems and don't live outside the womb past a few days. Statistically, that was 1.5 of my six. Hopefully that wouldn't happen; the parents weren't related, so inbreeding wasn't a problem. There was also an outside chance 5 and 7 would cannibalize the kids, but flying over the Andes with them wasn't on my agenda.
I didn't think I'd be able to notice day by day growth (my track record with 7 proves that) but there was a noticeable size difference every single day for 8-13. On the fourth day, they started getting an all over five o'clock shadow. A tiny bit of white or gray on top (the black one had black hair, so he/she looked the same). They were either developing early, or I didn't discover their existence until a few days after their birth.
The parents were always sleeping on top of the pups, keeping them warm. Mom and Dad were both putting in a lot of work: it renewed my faith in modern day parenting, at least among rodents. It was hard to keep track of all the kids, but seeing as they couldn't escape the tank, checking on them was just a page out of Where's Waldo. Some little guy would usually fall asleep and then get buried in mulch, and he'd be the hard one to find.
One day, a pup wasn't so lucky. I found him dead in a corner. Statistically, 1.5 were on the dead pool list, so this was still under par. But a dead baby gerbil's still depressing. Unlucky #13.
A second, underweight one wasn't growing at the same rate as the other four pups. They were healthy and active, he was still a runt. I pulled for him, and made sure he got a choice sunflower seed whenever I fed them. He lingered on for a few weeks, staying the same size while his brothers and sisters plumped up. I hoped he would either get healthy or be put out of his misery, and mother nature chose the second option one day. #8 became the second dead baby gerbil, and I was now over par.
The other four were growing just fine. The gerbils now had enough hair so they could be told apart. There was a black one, an off white one, and two grays. I was really going through the food now. The kids looked like regular gerbils now, just shrinky-dinked. They moved on to solid food, and the five pound bag of food I bought began rapidly disappearing. I thought it would last a good year or so, but I was running low after two months.
I thought I saw 5 busting a move with 7 one day. Uh oh, this is how the last batch started. Dad needed to get his GED (Gerbil Erectile Disfunction). I couldn't think of ways to overstress him into this without a Richard Gere mask, which is hard to find when it's not Halloween season.
7 was pregnant again, and soon popped out four more jellybeans, #14-17. 7 was as fertile as the Tigris/Euphrates. Mr. Mayor got elected for a second term. Once again, 5 and 7 were being great parents to the wriggling pups, taking turns keeping them warm. I wanted to get 5 out of the picture, but not in that first week or two. I didn't want any of this second batch to die because Mom was overworked.
Fast forward two weeks or so, to moving day. I put the gerbil tank in the passenger seat of my car, driving to all the pet stores I know. The first store didn't buy any animals. They had plenty of empty cages, and not a single gerbil in the store, but they weren't buying. The second store was closed, and no posting of when the open hours were.
The third store was where I got 7 from. Hopefully the putz who sold me 7 wouldn't be here. He was, naturally, and the only person in the store to boot. He looked more at place as the first guy busted out of a poker game. He didn't seem to recognize me.
The same bin o' gerbils was there, and had spilled over to fill a second tank as well. There were about two dozen in each tank, most of them full grown but a few a little smaller than my older kids. They were all white, leading me to believe their family tree didn't have any branches.
As I explained my situation to him, he went to the gerbil tanks and quickly pruned them, like shaking your computer mouse so your boss thinks you're busy. I saw brown clumps along all of the gerbils' butts. I thought that was some sort of infection, since my gerbils never had anything like that, and they were poop vending machines. He said no, the critters just get clumped up like that when they've got no room to move.
"Maybe if you separated them into a male tank and a female tank, they wouldn't reproduce so much," I suggested.
"I guess, someday," he said as if I suggested putting a man on Mars instead of five minutes of sorting work. He found a dead gerbil in the litter, and tossed it in a plastic bag. "They don't get exercise in there," he said, flinging the bag in the trash.
Like the first store, he wouldn't buy the gerbils, but would take them off my hands for free. Pretty good racket these pet store guys had going: sell customers specimen that'll breed, sell them food, then collect the post-coital overstock for free and sell those to others.
All I'd have to do was drive the gerbils over to the store, and he'd take the males (using his expert eye to pick the males). They were currently sitting in my car a few yards away, and I was looking for nothing but to get rid of half of them. "Maybe I'll stop by in a few days," I said. I drove off and brought the tank back to my place.
I pulled out the phone book and started calling pet stores. I found a store with a empty gerbil tank. My boys would have complete privacy. They were priced at $5.99 each at the store. White mice were just $1.50, so snake owners looking for a hot meal would probably aim for the cheap food. I didn't get any money, just handed them over, but they were safe and comfy and, most importantly, not impregnating my girls.
The real question was whether Big Daddy 5 or one of the older kids had knocked anyone up before their move. The day I drove them around in the car, I saw 7 doing her transvestite dance, so this would be cutting it pretty close to the bone. I'd have to wait, see if 7 grew big, again.
7 grew big, again. I should put this gerbil on a lecture circuit to couples who can't conceive. A week ago, out popped three more mammalian maggots: 18, 19 and 20. My mayoral time got extended to a third term, and there's no signs that term limits will ever be imposed. Maybe this is why gerbils are illegal in California.
The joys of gerbil parenting were wearing out faster than five dollar jeans. I had secretly wanted the first batch, but not the second, and certainly not the third. My five pound bag of Vita-Vittles was disappearing like the one keg of Sam Adams at the frat party next to the three kegs of Old Milwaukee. The exercise wheel was being run like an air conditioner on the equator, and the more it was used, the more of a squeak it developed. The litter needed to be changed much more often, and would get a horse stable smell a few days after each changing.
I took the gerbils out yesterday to clean the cage, and could only find two babies. #18 and #20 were there (a black and one of the two reds; they're still hairless), but no #19. Probably asleep in the litter. I held still a minute, seeing if there were any peeps or movements coming from a litter pile. Nothing. Maybe dead in the litter. I dug through. Nothing. I dug through again, and again. Nothing, and nothing. 19 had disappeared.
Ruling out gerbilnapping, the only possibility was that 19 was eaten. No blood or eye nubs anywhere, so every last bit was devoured in just a day or so. Nice parenting, 7. It was like an elementary school joke come to life: Why was 18 and 20 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate 19.
If I got off my butt and got 5 out of the tank earlier, 18-20 wouldn't have been born, and 19 wouldn't have been lunch. I'm going to have to hit the pet store again real soon, since 14-17 are getting to that dangerous age, and that Visa Check Card commercial with the rabbits is fast becoming a documentary. Plus the year's supply of Vita-Vittles has maybe a week's worth left in it. I'll have to go a third time when 18 and 20 are older, and probably a fourth time because that Jurassic Park spontaneous sex changing will probably happen just to annoy me.
Maybe I should get a snake.