lantairvlea | Failed to mention

Lance's gerbil, Bess (also called Jeebes), died this week. It makes me rather annoyed. Why do you ask? Because it was completely preventable. The poor thing had no food in its bowl and most likely died of neglect. This irritates me to no end. Mostly because I've raked him about feeding his gerbil before. I've told him time and time again that he needs to feed the poor thing and, admittedly, he does, but it seems that it was only after I'd reminded him and mostly only after the bowl was found to be empty by myself!

Now don't get me wrong, my little bro's a pretty good kid and keeps his nose clean, but, crymedy! He just doesn't know how to take care of animals. I think part of it could be found in that he does very little for the dogs. I'm usually the one who ends up feeding and watering them (I admit, usually needing a slight reminder, but they've never gone a day without both food and water present) as well as when it comes to bathing them. Heck, I think there was only once or twice that I wasn't the one to bathe the dogs.

So, yes, I'm rather cross with the boy and have done a bit of fist shaking about it all. Gnrr. It just irritates me to no end that Bess ended up dying of neglect, of starvation. Especially since it is where I live! It isn't as if he was old either, we've had the gerbils for a little over a year (maybe a year and a half?) and Vinerm was older than Bess to begin with so it is almost equally irritating that the younger of the two gerbils is the one that died.

I think, when we move, I want to pick up a larger tank and a second gerbil, possibly female. I'd like to raise at least one litter of gerbil pups. I heard that gerbils tend to mate for life and, sometimes, if the mate is removed for a time and then brought back, they may not recognize each other as former mates and may reside together without producing another litter of pups. This would be kinda interesting to experiment with, but it'll have to wait for a bit until I can get a bigger cage and soforth (granted, Lance's old cage is now vacant *smolder*).

G'night all, Merry Christmas, despite circumstances!