You may remember that I have a slate male who had a bloody nose for about a week, and had to separate him from his two brothers because they kept re-opening his wound while grooming him. I put Neosporin on his wound once a day, and after separating him, he has completely healed after a week or so. He's still missing some whiskers, but they're coming back in now. (By the way, for the benefit of others who may encounter this problem, I called the vet about his bloody nose, and she said she would have recommended the Neosporin treatment and not done anything else unless the problem didn't clear up within the time it did.) I'm getting ready to move to another state in a couple of weeks, and wanted to reintroduce him to his two brothers, which would result in having one less gerbil tank to take with me on the 900+ mile drive. Having been separated for such a long time, I was pretty sure I'd have to do a split-cage introduction, and even then wasn't sure it would be successful since he'd be going back into a group instead of with just one other gerbil. As an experiment (wearing heavy gloves), I picked him up in one hand and picked up one of his brothers in the other, and let put them just close enough together so they could sniff each other. That seemed to go okay, so I held them a little closer, and everything was still fine. I put my hands together and they sniffed each other a few times and then decided to climb up my arms. I did the same with the other brother, and everything went fine. So I put the slate in the tank with his brothers, and they're getting along like they never had been separated. I wonder if this is just good luck, or if it resulted from having had their tanks adjacent to each other while they were separated so that they could stay acquainted with each others' scents. Just thought I'd pass the story along to the List, not that I'd necessarily suggest following a similar plan of action, but just to say that it worked this once. Regards, Rick ---------------------------------- http://netxp.com/rick/gerbils Last website update: May 12, 2000
