My blog has been abandoned for quite some time due to me not having the internet available. How I have missed the internet! I've got the internet back now hurray :-) I'm starting off my new wave of blog posts with the announcement of my two new pets - two baby gerbils. I have had a zoo of animals surrounding me while I was growing up because I love animals. For each animal that I had while growing up, at least several months, even years, of begging and nagging of the parents occured before I eventually wore them down and was allowed to build up my collection of beautiful and entertaining animals. If my parents were still in the country I doubt they would be happy about my two new best friends but since they are infact in another country, I feel I am safe from their wrath. Wahahaha. Ok so I know my parents will read this, so hello parents! What I am saying is that there is nothing you can do about it but don't worry, I will give the gerbils the best care they could get and they put a smile on my face.
Here is a list of all the types of pets that I have had that I can think of and some stories to match some of them:
Fish With the first fish that I had, I was not the best of owners. I admit it. I now believe that children should not have pets and that they shouldn't even be sold in pet shops. I was just a tiddler when I had those fish and at the time I had a very strange friend who also had a pet fish. She told me that fish like to be held and cuddled, thrown and played with. I didn't know she was wrong. So once, I picked my own fish up out of the water.....and threw it at the wall to see if it would stick. I am NOT proud of that and I feel sick thinking about the suffering I caused. The fish amazingly survived for a while after once back in the water. I guess I'm writing it down to admit my sin but I don't know that I deserve forgiving. Once I realised that this was a bad way to treat animals, I vowed to myself that I would never mistreat an animal again. I wouldn't ever want to cause pain and suffering to an animal.
Cat Her name was Tabatha. I still miss Tabby. She was a stray cat and I felt sorry for her and so I let her walk in to our house through the front door while Mum was talking on the phone and couldn't move to stop me. Originally Mum wanted the cat to leave, but I think it was winter so she said the cat could stay till it was a bit warmer. Mum got attached to Tabby though so happily Tabby lived with us permanently. She used to literally walk me to school and then when I came home she would be waiting under a bush to walk me back home. Perhaps she just saw me as the food bringer and tin opener though. I think she was an affectionate creature though. Not only that, towards the end of her days we discovered she was blind. We don't know how long she was blind for but you wouldn't have known because she was great at getting about.
Jirds Brilliant, athletic and friendly pets. We had x3 of them and they were brothers that we named Indy (after Indiana Jones), Thursday and Pip. We only bought x2 of the brothers at first but then we felt horribly guilty for leaving the third brother alone in the pet shop so we rushed back and bought the last jird brother home. The jirds never would bite and they could leap great distances across chairs and slide down the backs of them.There is one story that haunts me though. Once my sister dropped a jird in the bath, she rescued him straight away but he needed drying off. I don't know why because it was a STUPID idea but we used a hairdryer to dry him off. We stopped straight away because...oh it's just awful, it made his eyes bleed from the heat. It was an accident and if we had known it would hurt him we wouldn't have done it in a million years. I still feel very very guilty about it but there is sort of a happy ending, because those jird brothers lived a long and I think happy life, including this unfortunate hairdried jird.
Chinchilla Very fast runner and very fluffy! Brilliant because he was unusual.
Rat Very friendly, cuddly and clean. He used to sit on my shoulder and tickle my ears.
Stick insects A girl at school was giving baby ones away for free so I got one. He was interesting to watch because he danced around his tank. They sway from side to side a lot. Once I had him though I realised I was too afraid to touch him becasue I don't really like creepy crawlies but I looked after him well. They don't need handling to be happy.
Garden snails/ladybirds/frogs/tadpoles/slugs - I was very little when I 'rescued' these from the garden.
Degus I had two Degus and they surprised me because I was told they were boys but turned out one was a girl because there were some little baby degus in the cage one day! Very cute they were too. I feel guilty because I gave them away and I can't remember why. I remember running to tell Mum that they had babies and I was really worried because I thought Mum would be very angry because neither of my parents were ever happy about me getting animals even though I somehow ended up with a zoo. She laughed her head off though....after all it wasn't my fault that one had been infact a girl and I bet my scared face was a picture!
Quails I have to say these don't make good pets. They were constantly frightened. I couldn't find a way to tame them and they just ran about very quickly and hurt themselves a bit from running into things! We had to give them away to someone with a larger bird cage.
Dog She is called Sky and she is retired in France with my parents. She is just wonderful and there are too many funny stories to even fit in to a blog post. I love her more than everything and miss her very much.
Guinea pigs We started with x2 guinea pigs and they were cuddly and friendly and named Daisy and Venessa. Good pets they were. When they went to guinea pig heaven we bought x2 more guinea pigs and again, I don't know why but we gave them away to my brother. I think because I wasn't a good enough owner in a way because maybe I got lazy and didn't want to clean them out and just wanted to play with them. I remember Dad doing a lot of the cleaning! Sorry Dad! I'm not like that anymore though.
I have listed these pets in no particular order of when I had them. Getting back to the two pets and only pets that I now have to look after....my GERBILS!!! I just love them. They are so small at the moment but very ridiculously cute. They have big eyes and tiny paws. They are incredibly active and learn new things quickly. They are slowly getting used to me and Adrian and they crack us up all the time because they do the funniest things sometimes like standing on top of eachother and making eachother squeak or sleeping in the excercise wheel instead of the bed. Today we made a maze for them out of DVD's and they seemed to enjoy that. They also love their excercise ball and are really good at steering it. Here's a video of one gerbil in the maze:
