Meet Jake....

I promised an update on Macie's gerbil Jake......well today is the day to let it all hang out...Why today you ask?...because the stinky little thing kept me up most of last night and I had to be up at 5 am to get ready for work.

This is Macie's gerbil Jake. Jake and I have had a love/hate relationship for the past two years or so. The people at PetSmart told me I should consider a gerbil intead of a hamster because gerbils are less likely to bite (not true in our case), are more likely to be awake in the early to late afternoon so the kids could actually play with it (also not true), are just all around more sociable than hamsters (yet one more time...not true.) I'm wondering if they saw a sucker coming and told me anything to make the sale. (Those stinking liars..ha!)

Just wondering...after seeing the beady red eyes and the long tail, what makes a gerbil much different than your average mouse or rat other than the color?? His little red eyes give me the creeps but Macie wanted a white one.


This gerbil is a piece of work. He's had this "exercise ball" (in which he gets absolutely NO exercise) for the past two years. I thought that if he can figure out how to turn the wheel in his cage (which he does very well, esp at 2am...and it squeaks LOUDLY) that he should be able to figure out how to run in this thing but NO!!! He just sits in it....staring at us....Dumb gerbil. Whatever happened to the good ol' days when a gerbils life expectancy was 1 to 2 years?? I had hamsters growing up and they never lived more than 1 1/2 years or so. This thing is (almost) 2 and seems to be going strong. Macie will probably get very upset after reading this post and I apologize, but my goodness....He bites, he sleeps all day and is up ALLLLLL night, he pushes all of his shavings out of his cage onto the floor, he stinks....the list is endless. But in the end, Macie loves him. He bites her too, she can't even pick him up. I'm wondering if his fear has anything to do with his first few days at our home. The story is hilarious...until the pulling off the tail thing ; that part is not so funny. Flash back two years ago to late Oct. early Nov. My children and I are walking though PetSmart getting stuff for our then living hermit crabs (also a disaster...much more stinky than Jake- not good for kids) Macie sees the gerbils and wants one. I, being the good mother that I am (ha!), tell her to ask for one for Christmas. So I decide to get her one. Heck... I had hamsters as a kid....why can't she? Ha!! They spent Christmas that year with their Dad. They got out of school like on the 18th or something and went straight to his house for the holidays (through the 26th at noon ). I was working that day (the 18th)and drove from the hospital like a maniac to get to petSmart before they closed at 9pm. (I had already gotten the cage and all of the accessories and hid them in the attic weeks before.) The people at PetSmart had warned me that they tend to sell out of gerbils and hamsters early at Christmas time because they are such a popular gift (that's probably one more thing that is not true- what can I say? I'm a sucker with a capital S) So I got this red-eyed rat thing and drove home with him in the tiny box they gave me hoping the whole time that he wouldn't chew a hole through the box on the 40 min ride home. I get home and my mom and I set up the cage in the kitchen and it is time to put him in the cage. There was one problem... she and I were both terrified of him. To make a long story short, my very brave mom put on oven mitts and got Jake out of the box and into the cage. There was ALOT of screaming and laughing involved. I should have had Dad video it... we might have won $100,000 on America's Funniest Home Videos. Then I had to take care of this thing until the kids come home on Dec 26th. When she gets home, Macie of course wants to touch him, so trying to be brave... I try to get Jake out of his cage, there was more screaming and laughing and slamming the cage door on his head. After a while of this he seemed to become more afraid of us...wonder why??? So, I try to grab him by the tail...Big mistake, HUGE!!! The hair and skin on the tip of his tail came right off, and boy did it bleed. I almost threw up it was so gross, plus the knowledge of what I had just done to this poor animal was almost too much to bear. Then, the tip turned black over the next few days and eventually fell off. His hair grew back over the remainder of the tail eventually. Ughhhh...it was terrible, Merry Christmas Macie.... here is your tail-less, bloody gerbil. Anyway, back to Macie, present day, she has to trick him in to his ball to get him out of the cage. She does remember to feed him and water him which is probably why he has been healthy. Can't say I always remembered that about my hamsters! (Sad but true). I must admit that even I find myself going to check on the stinky little thing several times a week and adding food and water to his cage in spite of myself. Well, I think I've vented enough about Jake, It's off to bed, had a LONG day at work today. Take care....