We only lasted a few weeks after Sandy's sad demise before we felt the place was far to quiet with out him scurrying round at night. We fancied having two critters running around, but of coarse Syrian Hamsters don’t play well with others. Unfortunately the Russian Dwarf Hamsters that we had been told were an option would escape our currant set up easily. So we, well myself and Quinn anyway, decides upon two Gerbils instead.

Pepper

We came home with one whiteish one and a black one. Salt and Pepper, as they were soon named were put into the rearranged cages (couldn’t stand to see it as we had it setup for Sandy) and settled in well, chewing everything.

Pepper was an adventuress lad, escaping on several occasions necessitating the caging needing to be reinforced with aluminum where he had chewed his way out. He also loved spinning round in this external wheel thing attached to the tunneling making a racket in to the night.

Sadly one afternoon we realized we hadn’t seen Pepper that morning and as he wasn’t any where obvious we initially thought he had escaped as he was want to do. Unfortunately on further investigation I found him in one of the mazes, dead. It looked as though he had just gone there and lay down. We took him to the vet and there were no obvious signs of any thing we would need to get Salt treated for. It was most likely just his time being 2 n half years old which we’re given to under stand is average for gerbils.

This page added..23/03/09