| The Sooty and Smudge Chronicles (otherwise known as Smooty and Sudge) |
| The Sooty and Smudge Chronicles will be kept updated. As the story grows the earlier chapters will be archived in groups and only the most recent ones will be displayed on the Sooty and Smudge pages. |
| This is the Story of Sooty and Smudge. They are Gerbils. Black Gerbils to be exact. They live in Switzerland with their caregiver, Michelle. Sooty is sooty and Smudge has a smudge, but sometimes they are Smooty and Sudge. Read on in The Sooty and Smudge Chronicles. |
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| Sunday March 16th Well, Sooty and Smudge have now been with me for five weeks, though it seems a lot longer than that. They are still not particularly happy about bring picked up, though and not fussed about climbing out of the cage on their own and cannot be trusted when the cage door is open. Just the other day I was trying to move the waterbottle to a better location in their cage, and had to in the end close the side door, because they kept climbing out and I could not let them out when my hands were busy. Upon shutting the door they started climbing the side of the cage and rattling and pushing on the door, and even started jumping up at it, in the hopes of forcing it open. It is amazing to think that they are smart enough to try and open the door, yet are so silly in respect to other things (including the fact that they occasionally give each other a fright from time to time. They have acquired a new sleeping box, when I finally arrived at the conclusion that nothing is going to stop them chewing the bars at night time. They seem to do it specifically to annoy me, as they always start doing it just as I am going to bed and wanting to sleep, and no matter how many pillows I put over my head, I can�t ever completely block the noise and it has got to be one of the most annoying noises in the world. Even the vacuum cleaner could never compare to the noise of a rodent, gerbil, rat, hamster or otherwise, chewing on cage bars! So they now sleep in a plastic cage, where they have no bars to chew on! For the last two nights I have slept much better and have had no problems getting to sleep. In fact, I can even sleep on my back now, as I don�t need to put pillows over my ears to block out the noises! I am still thinking of getting some earplugs, as they do occasionally thump and bang in the plastic cage if they get a fright and this can wake me quite suddenly, but at least it doesn�t take me forever to get to sleep again. I had forgotten what it was like to sleep in a room without rodents chewing on bars or digging in their food dishes and munching noisily. The plastic sides of the cage lessen the noise considerably. They have settled in to the routine quite well and seem to be getting better at recovering from getting picked up. Sooty and Smudge are currently sulking sightly in their cage, having just had their claws clipped despite their protests. I think I did fairly well, considering it was just me, a towel, nail clippers and a very disgruntled gerbil! I huddled them up against me and pulled their back feet out to clip their back nails, and then wrapped them in the towel to clip their front feet. Sooty was very brave and was just a little shaky about the whole ordeal, until he got a nice scratch afterwards, and then he settled right down. Smudge was being bity about it, so after I clipped one nail, I put him back in the cage to cool down and clipped Sotty�s nails instead. Once Sooty was done, I tried to get Smudge back out, but he was like a bar of soap, and bouncing all over the place. Sooty was surprisingly placid about this behaviour. Normally if one of them starts behaving like that, the other one joins in. I finally cornered Smudge and got him out, and wrapped him, much to his discontent, very securely in the towel before starting. I had to rewrap him ever few moments because he squirmed so much and had to settle him down frequently, but eventually the back feet were done and I�d only been nipped a few times� then it was time for the front feet. I wrapped him up so the his face and one foot was sticking out and held him still, and clipped the nails where they sat against the towel. I found this to be a good system when Smudge started chewing on the blanket in his annoyance, instead of me. One foot finished, I unwrapped him and wrapped him up the other way and repeated the process. Once I was finished I let him crawl out, and the first thing he did was turn around in my hand and start chewing vigorously on the edging of the towel!! Quite amusing, I think he seriously thought that the towel was to blame for the whole ordeal and was wanting to punish it! They are settling down again after the most unusual happenings that came upon them just earlier and are a little less jumpy. If it wasn�t for the amount of noise they make, they�d make perfect pets� but they are still highly amusing little charcters. |
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