| 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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| 14th February 2003 VALENTINE'S DAY 8.30pm Just had Sooty and Smudge out again for a bit. Sooty came as willingly as before, and we went across and explored the hamster cage. He was fascinated by it, and then Petit Loup, my dwarf hamster, came out to see what was going on. She came over to see waht this black thing was and stuck her nose to the bar where Sooty was sniffing. Sooty barely got a whiff before he shot up my arm and tried to bury himself, trembling, under my arm. It took a bit of petting and cooing to get him to stop hiding. Some big tough gerbil he is! Scared off by a little bundle of fluff a third of his size. Sook. There's a nickname for him... Sooky... Smudeg refused my hand as usual, but I had the brainwave of putting the ladder up against the door. They're too small to haul themselfs up and out without help, which is a good thing, since I'd accidentally left the door open and unattended with just Smudge in the cage! Sooty quite literally nosedived off my hand in to the cage. He's lucky the bedding was there or he'd have gotten a headache! His head disappeared in to the bedding, but then he resurfaced, it was quite comical! It took them a while of dithering about with the ladder before Smudge finally climbed it. He seemed to have second thoughts for a moment about my hand, but then climbed on out. I lost my balance, as I was sitting on my heels, and he got a bit of a fright and ran up and hid in my hair. He came out after a bit of cooing and petting and then decided he wanted to check out the rug... ummm... sorry Smudge, that's a NoNo... Finally I managed to convince him to climb down my arm into the cage and not to the rug. At one point without even being aware of it at the time, I picked Sooty up the same way I pick up my rats back home when I need to pick them up quickly so I can move. A hand around the middle, not too tight and away we go. Normally if you try to pick one of the Gerbils up like that they run off and go all jumpy, or fight you. But Sooty seems to be making progress, as he took it all in stride and didn't protest in the least. It wasn't until I put him down that I actually realised I had picked him up like that. Sooty is doing very well, Smudge is getting there a little at a time... 7.30pm Well, it's been a busy week, so Sooty and Smudge haven't had a lot of time with me, but I've tried to at least stop by their cage and give them treats each morning and afternoon. They seem to be adapting and come popping up from what they're doing when they see me coming. They're noisy little critters sometimes at night, digging in their corner. I think they may have given up last night and realised that it's dig proof... but there's always food to chew on really loudly during the dead quite of 4am! Got them out for a play this afternoon after i'd opened up my parcels (my birthday is sunday, and parcels from home arrived today). Read my birthday cards to them and they just looked at me as if to say 'yeah, cool, can we have a treat now?' Strange, Sooty was the timid one before, now he's friendlier than Smudge. Climbed on to my hand and I brought him out easy as pie for a run around my lap, and put him back in again, sitting on my hand. Smudge simply wouldn't climb properly on my hand. Kept trying to bite my instead. A couple of times it actually hurt. Then he got a hold of my finger and bit down over the bone, hard! It hurt a lot so I lifted my hand out. Smudge got a surprise and came with the hand. I got him out at last, but he made me bleed for it! I brought Sooty out too in the hopes it would relax Smudge a bit. I let them use my arm as a ladder back in to the cage afterwards, then gave them both several treats. Sooty climbs on and off my hand without fear. Smudge will sniff me and poke at me, try and burrow under me, even RUN across my hand, but not stay on so I can lift him. I'll have to work on that. I have decided to call them 'he's, although i'm still not sure what they are! If in doubt, go with what seems fitting. They just seem more like 'he's sometimes. So 'he' it is! Here's to hoping Smudge realises next time that I'm not food!! They're making progress, so it's all good. |