Tag: pets

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life pictures

Saffron and Elli…ot

Not long after Savannah left this morning for the Utah Classic ballroom competition Mariah called me into their room.

“Dad come look, you’ve got to see this.”

While we purchased two female dwarf hamsters it turns out that Ellie is actually Elliot.

I’m hopeful that first-time-mother Saffron doesn’t get too worried to care for her babies. Two is an awfully small litter so I’m a bit concerned that things might not be alright but I’m hopeful that it will all work out – and then we’ll have to decide how to handle mixed genders.

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life

Don’t Pounce!

As evidenced by the history already recorded here, keeping rodents as pets with young children pretty well guarantees that there will be a pattern of escape and recapture. Such was the case tonight. Mariah informed me that one of Alyssa’s gerbils had gotten away. Very soon after I got in the room Stormy ran out from behind the dresser and ran next to the edge of the bed. I immediately barked “don’t pounce!” By the time I finished those two words Alyssa had pounced and Stormy was bleeding on the ground. I picked her up directly but she died in my hands within seconds.

Shortly after we got our first litter of baby gerbils Laura had the experience of having Isaac pounce on the gerbil she liked the most with the result that it died in Laura’s hands when she picked it up. I thought of that as Stormy died. In Laura’s case she cried for the loss of life because Isaac was too young to understand what had happened. I remember hours later when I got home he still obviously did not understand what had happened. Unlike Isaac, Alyssa did understand what happened so she did the sobbing. While I really felt sorry for the death of Stormy I felt even more sorry for the pain that Alyssa was feeling.

I understand now why Laura felt so deeply in her experience. I’m hoping that I was able to say and do the right things to help Alyssa process and work through her grief. Time will tell but I am encouraged that she was able to go to sleep tonight without too much trouble.

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life

There’s a Mouse in the House

Before the title causes anyone to get too excited let me quickly clarify that this is not actually a mouse story but “rodent” does not rhyme with house. Also, I should mention that “rodent” does not refer to a wild animal. Lastly, for anyone who remembers our adventure with Moonlight, this does not include tearing apart any walls.

Currently in our house we have 16 gerbils – which is seven more than I would ever have planned on. We have two parents who occasionally have a litter of around five pups and we have two gerbils from an early litter that we allowed Savannah to keep. Two weeks ago our mother gerbil, Sweetie, gave birth to a litter of seven pups a few days earlier than we had expected so we had not sold the five gerbils from the previous litter. We hurriedly moved them to a separate cage just before she gave birth so those five little gerbils are under Savannah’s care right now.

This morning as I was getting ready in the dark I saw a rodent shadow cross our bedroom door and I knew we had a problem. I went into Savannah’s room and looked in the cage to discover that one boy and both girls from that barely weaned litter had escaped in the night.

Savannah and I soon found the boy, Cecil, under a dresser in her room but he escaped past us and got into the master bedroom. We found him again behind a bookshelf in the master bedroom but he escaped again. In the process we woke Laura up.

The three of us stopped while Savannah said a prayer asking that none of the gerbils would be in the walls or the vents and that we would recover them safely. Within a minute Savannah heard a noise behind our refrigerator. The three of us looked and saw one of the girls. We carefully surrounded the fridge and I pulled it out allowing Laura to catch our runaway.

Savannah and I decided to put some food out to entice the others. Savannah put a pile on the floor of the master bedroom and I placed some food near their cages hoping they would return toward home. Another minute later Laura walked into the master bedroom to see the other girl scamper away from the food. Laura and I worked to remove obstacles such as the recliner she ran toward and soon we had her trapped in one corner under our bed. When Laura moved the last item in that corner we saw that both of our remaining escapees were hiding there. I tried to surround them but Cecil got under my arm again – maybe we should call him Houdini. I caught the other girl and passed her to Laura. Again we heard Cecil behind the bookcase in our room. This time I was able to catch him.

So after half an hour of excitement we had all our gerbils back without even waking the other kids when we searched their room early in the chase. At 6:00 AM it was time for a prayer of gratitude.

P.S. Despite the date, this story is no joke.

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life pictures

Finding Our Lost Sheep

Three days ago, on Wednesday evening, our hamster, Moonlight, got away from us. Normally when this happens we know where she is and/or she comes back where we can get her, but this time we could not locate her and she did not show up within a few minutes. We soon came to the conclusion that she must have made her way into the vents so we set out some food and water in a couple of places where she might get to them (such as the cool air return in the top of the downstairs hallway). Unfortunately after 24 hours none of the food or water stores had been touched and we were beginning to get worried. Our only consolation was that we were still occasionally hearing scratching noises from time to time suggesting that she was still alive.

Last night after Laura and I got home from our date Laura called me down as she heard Moonlight at close range in one of the basement walls near another cold air return. I took off the cover but there was no Moonlight. We decided that she must not be in the vents but in the walls themselves. We went into the spare bedroom and cut a hole into the wall where we heard her. She was not in the place where we cut, but we continued to hear her. She would begin climbing the walls every time we called her name. When we were confident about where she was located we finally performed the rescue operation (at 11:00 pm):

After two days of being trapped in the walls we had our Moonlight back. She was happy to see us and very happy to start drinking some water.

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life

Not Pregnant Anymore

To finish a story that Laura started earlier today – when we bought Angel last night (Savannah’s new pet mouse) we knew we were in for an adventure since she was pregnant. The woman at the store guessed that Angel would have her babies in about a week. I figured that was enough time for Angel to get adjusted before we would have to stop handling her while the babies were in their infancy. (We were told that handling the mother after the babies were born might make the mother become aggressive toward the babies.)

Angel had her babies today (probably very close to the time Laura published her post). They are two cute pink squirmy things right now, but we expect to enjoy watching them grow until we have do decide whether to keep them or to sell them.

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life

Meet Zach

Yesterday we got a dog. We’ve been talking about it for a long time and Laura and I had decided by June to get one after the move. Two weeks ago (or even a week ago) we were expecting to get a dog for Christmas, but on Friday we decided to go look at a beagle that was available at the Humane Society. Since we were looking at dogs, which the kids loved, we visited the Pet Super Adoption that was taking place in Salt Lake City – that’s where we met Zach (he was named Brom there). He’s a Heeler/Terrier mix. He just fit right in with the rest of the family. Since the event was closing for the night and we didn’t know much about heelers (we had focused our research on beagles) we decided to learn what we could about his breed overnight and then adopt him in the morning (assuming we didn’t learn anything too alarming about heelers).

It was interesting yesterday while we were out running errands to see how Zach was so attached to everyone in the family. At one point I got out of the car to run a quick errand and he went from content to nearly frantic (according to Laura – I wasn’t there) until I came back. Later Laura left for a short time and he had the same reaction.

After only 24 hours we have had our first escape (this morning before church) and our first home alone time (church). We also know that Zach can jump the fence so we’re happy to see that he tends to come back. We are already looking forward to the time when we all get used to the new rhythms of pet ownership when we and Zach all know what to expect of each other.