Gerbil TV

I suppose it’s about time I answered the question.  What is Gerbil TV?

Keep in mind that my family gave up cable TV a few years ago.  We still get broadcast, when the weather is good, and rent videos a fair amount, but we don’t do any channel surfing.

Last year we went to the pet store and got a couple of gerbils for my daughter. 

Gerbils are fun to watch.  They are sociable creatures who get along much better than hamsters.  Soon my whole family found itself standing round the cage, watching the gerbils play.  We spent more time watching gerbils than watching TV.

When we got them, the clerk assured me they were both female.  You’d think a pet store clerk would be able to tell, wouldn’t you?  Hah!

Everything was fine until about four months after we brought them home.  Then it turned out one of the gerbil was a daddy, which made the other a mommy, and we had ourselves a litter of 6 gerbils.

Like I said, gerbils are sociable creatures.  The daddy did not eat any of the babies and neither did the mommy.  Instead, we got treated to gerbil antics like box matches, friendly chases, group grooming – get your mind out of the gutter, they weren’t doing anything naughty – and gerbils who would sit on their haunches and watch TV.

We gave that litter to the pet store when we couldn’t find anyone else to give them to.  Did you know gerbils breed as soon as a litter is born?  By the time we figured out which gerbil was nursing the babies, it was already too late.  Shortly after giving away the first litter of gerbils, we were treated to another.  We decided to keep this one because they were so fun to watch.

We took these gerbils to the veterinarian to have them positively identified girls from boys.  You wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be that hard to tell, would you?  I mean, surely a veterinarian could be relied on to do a good job.

So, a few weeks later we had our third litter.  Yep, it turned out daddy was the only male in the lot.  We now have three cages of gerbils.  Every so often the gerbils will do something cute and the whole family ends up standing around the cages watching gerbil TV.

Alice