Heavenly Heart Gerbilry

My mom felt bad about it so we went to a petstore and got a fat lonely female. Brought her home with a tank and a screen lid. Gave her a mac & Cheese box which she did not leave for the next day. . . guess why! She was fat because she was pregnant! I named her Roxie; she was my first tux black. She began my first bout with breeding; I found the AGS a few years later in 98. When I lost some gerbils to health problems I switched bedding, in 99 I stopped dealing with the AGS as I got too busy working and in 2002 I lost all of my original line but one 3 year old male and 6 4 year old females. The male died November last year after living with my mom.

The girls died 2 years ago in December. Last December my hubby decided I need a new pet and surprised me with mice. All of which died of unknown causes. 4 months later I decided I wanted to get gerbils again and started looking, I had forgotten the AGS. Until Dani contacted me that she could adopt to me some breeders and sell me some cages :)

Thanks Dani, my life has been so much better since they came back into
my life :)

Kathy
Kansas City Kenne

Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 19:37:36 -0600
From: "Dani <starnightstarsky2000@yahoo.com>

Kathy,
Always happy to help a fellow gerbil lover :) My story is that I just love animals so much and got Linex (a nutmeg) and joined the AGS then came along my first breeding pair Snow White and Prince Charming both spotted Agouti, And have been going on strong since then.
Dani Marshall
Lots Of Love Gerbil Kennel

Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 22:02:08 EST
From: clydeani@aol.com

Hi Elaine,
Katie helped out both of us with wonderful little gerbils. How we got started was just by accident but what a happy accident it was. We own two mobile home rentals. There was a woman with two pre-teenage daughters that came to rent there, who had a pair of gerbils. This was about the third litter and all were in this same 10 gallon tank. There was something she needed us to come look at in the mobile home and I saw the little ones and fell in love. I knew there had to be to many in there....HOW in the world did they all not fight, knowing what I know now????? Who knows, but they all seemed very loving. I asked about them and the lady just gave us the pick of the litters so we chose a white and black one ... both males. We named them Salty and Pepper. We absolutely knew NOTHING about gerbils at all .... never even knew anyone who had gerbils. The only reason we took males is because I knew for sure and certain that I didn't want babies and figured they would probably be very prolific. :-) Anyway, the little guys must have been extremely hardy because they lived a long life .... Pepper was 31/2 and Salty was 4. We were so lost when little Salty died so I got on the internet to try and find gerbils in Arkansas and none was to be found. Yes, some in Petco but not really knowing anything
but our other boys, I knew these were not so healthy so in the end I found Katie. The first guys we had were never as loving as our little ones we've gotten from Katie but they did love for us to come talk to them. The few times I tried to pick them up they wanted to bite ... and DID. hahahaha This made me a wee bit afraid of the new ones but, my goodness !!! there was sure no reason to be. I pick our girls and boys up ALL the time. I just love them so much. There has never been as much as them touching me with their teeth. By the way Katie, they all love meal worms now. I only give them two a week. I kind of think it's what helped our other boys live so long. Of course I have no basis for thinking that so, please, no one take my word. Ask the pros. It's just that they love them and it's wonderful protein and I am very set on never over-doing the feeding of the meal worms. I buy the very small size meal worms. They are so so cute grabbing the worms and holding them with both their little hands. They are wonderful.
Mary Alice

Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:14:15 -0000
From: "abcgerbils" <abcgerbils@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: how did you get into gerbils?

My husband went on a business trip and I decided it would be the perfect time to get a new pet for each of my daughters. At that
time all we had was one dog and two cats, can you believe it! We went to a pet store that had a huge open-topped enclosure full of
gerbils. They were really friendly. You could put your hand inside and they would climb up your arm. I picked out a "brown" (agouti)
gerbil with a blaze and wide collar for Katie who was only about two at that time. I picked out the gerbil because it reminded me of our tan and white beagle I had growing up. My older daughter wanted a "gray" one with red eyes (yuck, at the time I thought it looked
like a wild mouse). No way. So she picked out a nutmeg. I thought that one looked motley but since I'd already veto-ed the lilac I said sure. These were Cara and Blossom. Cara is the gerbil on the box in my front page: and Blossom is the gerbil on the apple in my logo.

I enjoyed playing with the gerbils as much as my kids. We made playgrounds on the landing and raced the gerbils up the stairs. They
were so fun and easy to care for we decided to get a male gerbil. We got him from a petstore in Massachussets so he wouldn't be
related. We bred him once to each of the girls. In our first litter (even though it was an agouti and black) we got about five colors including a black eyed white. I was hooked.

We found out there were fancy colors and got a silver nutmeg (Bullet) and a colorpoint slate (Rocky) from Texas. At that time there was nothing like that here in New England, so we started breeding for the rare "cb" and "g" gene. Later after getting Awesome from Gary we worked on trying to create the mottled.

Guess what? Now my gerbil room is getting filled up with black pups as I'm excited about seeing a sleek jet-black black with not stray
white anywhere. I also have come to love a show-quality lilac and nutmeg. I still love the colorpoint slates, probably my favorite
color, and the mottles are always fun (but frustrating as heck trying to get an "awesome" one).

You can see the history of my gerbils on the "My Gerbils" link of ABC Gerbils. I'm so proud and excited about my current line of
gerbils. By mixing in Furry Flowers, Black Wolf Clan, and NY Gerbil and more gerbils into my "pet store" lines I'm moving into some
absolutely beautiful gerbils. I still breed for temperament (both gerbil and people friendly) first with the image of little Cara scrambling up my arm as the "norm"; most of my gerbils are placed as pets often with children in the family so they have to be nice, too.

Donna
ABC Gerbils
www.abcgerbils.com

Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:46:40 -0000
From: "dsgerbils" <dsgerbils@yahoo.com>

In the Winter of 2000/Spring of 2001. I was getting restless for more animals. I had always had a lot of animals around (mostly cats,
dogs, birds) but was now in a place where I couldn't have anything but the birds. After owning a couple of parakeets for several months, and a G. piggie for a few weeks I started looking again. At one pet store, the clerk tried to sell me on the gerbils, they were
interesting, but I wasn't sure about them... Until that day that I went back to the Humane Society and saw these 2 animals leaping back and forth over a center divider in their tank. They were an Agouti (Chocolate) and Pied Agouti (Hershey). I used to call them Chocolate Kisses and Hershey Hugs :)

A year later, Hershey passed (while I was on vacation). Chocolate was VERY depressed, I contaced a couple of breeders but at that time driving several hours to get them SEEMED insane (amazing how our opinions change :-P. I instead picked out 3 gerbils from a local pet store. I took them home and the Apt manager at the time loved animals and helped me name them (Smores was her idea :) I was told (and pet stores lead by SUCH a great example *note: not typing this with a straight face) that all 4 could live together colony style. I later checked out the internet and found the AGS and Donna's site (which allowed me to assemble the breeders emergency kit just in time - Thank you Donna!) and separated them into 2 pairs. Each step that I have taken with these adorable little animals has brought me into a world I never new existed and brought me friends I never would have met. They are loving, giving, little creatures and that will always be what I associate gerbils with.

Michele
Double Star Gerbils

Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 03:55:16 -0500
From: "Cindy" <mydancingspirit@comcast.net>

I agree with Gary. It has been very interesting and fun to read how everyone first started with their gerbils.

My journey began two years ago this December. My daughter started asking for a Hamster for Christmas. She even picked out two that she really liked at a petstore. Turns out they were two gerbils in a cage under a sign that said male hamsters. I did a lot of research on pocket pets and decided that gerbils were probably the best match for us and they had a longer life span than most hamsters.

I stopped at the petstore that I had visited earlier with my daughter to ask about the two gerbils that my daughter liked. Since I was on my way to work, I asked if I could pay for them and have them hold them for me for 48 hours until I could return. I was very concerned that they would sell one of the gerbils that my daughter wanted. When I did return about 36 hours later the sales person that had helped me said, "We have a problem!!" My heart sank as I figured that they had sold my two gerbils. Well, it turns out that the problem was that one was male and one was female and almost definitely pregnant. I figured that I was not ready to try raising baby gerbils, so they refunded my money on the female gerbil and a friend of mine and I went on a mission to find another male gerbil that looked like the female gerbil in the cage.

We went to several stores before we found our replacement little guy. Since these two little boys were to be a surprise Christmas present for my daughter, my friend kept them at her house for 12 days before Christmas. She emailed me one day and said that she needed something to call the little guys, and had named them Kris and Kringle. I thought that they were great names for these two little gerbils. When my daughter saw them on Christmas morning, she loved their names and that is what they kept.

All of our gerbils have subsequently been named something in the Christmas theme. Currently we have five gerbils, Nicky (St. Nicholas) who is a Burmese and Kringle Jr. who is a Siamese. We traveled over 400 miles each way to purchase these two sweet guys from Cara-lee of the NY Gerbil. We have two doves that we call Tinsel and Mistletoe, and we have a Nutmeg named Christmas Chocolate Chip Cookie otherwise known as Chip.

They are all very inquisitive little critters and so much fun to watch as they create their tunnels and caves and various other artwork as they chew on boxes and tubes. I have family and friends that save the toilet paper and paper towel tubes for our little friends. We joke that they are not allowed into our house unless they come bearing gifts. To make sure that I would have an endless supply of tubes and egg cartons, I actually purchased a huge quantity online of about 200 egg cartons and about 1000 tubes. Because the gerbils receive so many as gifts, I think that my supply will outlast all of my gerbils.

....and that is how we got into gerbils

Cindy and Shannon

Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:44:20 -0000
From: "Cathy" <debbysmom2003@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: how did you get into gerbils?

I first got into gerbils by chance. I'd wanted a cat, but wasn't allowed to have one. When I was in first grade (1968) my father came home from teaching at Penn State with 6 gerbils. They belonged to someone else there who wanted us to gerbil sit while they were on vacation. It was exciting and a little surprising since my father doesn't really care for animals. Their owner gave us 2 of them
as a thank-you gift for watching them. My mother used to let us get a breeding pair once in a while, too, and we kept the babies. We didn't know much about them when we started, but got better as time went on.

I've had gerbils ever since, although they didn't live with me for 2 years when I was away in college. We have 8 of them now, but have had as many as 20 at once.