Hello List,
I am not exactly new to the list. I subscribed briefly last year for three
months and have been back with the list for the past two months. Melanie Gall's
story of love and devotion to her gerbil, Tippy, has brought me out
to give some of myself to this fine list of animal, especially gerbil,
lovers.
Our family has four wonderful, highly individualistic,
playful, energetic, curious to a fault, warm, and loving male gerbils.
Three golden agoutis and one pied agouti. The oldest, two years this July,
named C.J. is a store bought, sixth grade class pet, until I convinced
the teacher that after such duty retirement was required. C.J. became ours last
April and has been joined by three brothers from Evon of the Piney Woods
Gerbil Clan of East Texas. Our temporary names to distinguish the
three brothers became permanent. The largest became 'Big Guy', the smallest
became 'Little Guy' and the pied became 'Spotty'. All of these fellows with
their warm eyes and expressive faces tell us a great deal. So, I would say to
Melanie, No you are not crazy to understand what your gerbils tell you through
their faces for I, too, let our gerbils teach me how to behave and meet their
needs through their wonderful faces along with a lot of reading about gerbils
and following the discussions on the GML, of course. Wow, what a long
sentence..! I better stop now before I get too carried
away talking about these gerbils. But, like many of you on this list, the
stories we could tell about our relationships with these little animals are
truly wonderful, funny, and heart breaking, but this is why they stir our
passion and emotion and engender our love.
best to you all,
Reese
