digging gerbils

Firstly, my micro SD card spoilt so it's not possible to transfer some photos over from my phone. Sigh. Looking forward to equip my comp with bluetooth.

But I shall describe Herby and Gerby's new tank. They dig, yep, dug plenty. I washed them last Sunday and filled it with two and a half packets of soil (half from the leftover from the previous time). They explored, dug around, hesitantly prodding the ground but not being very careful where they stepped. Their feet sunk slightly into the ground despite me pressing down on the soil such that their box actually flattened a bit (oops).

But after about half an hour they found their wooden house! Their behaviour changes immediately upon finding their house...you can see them frantically start to burrow and dig and soil flies behind them like a sandstorm (that's what it would be in the desert!).

And once inside the house they continue digging at the glass bottom. Ouch! But good for them la, go shorten their nails =P

I went back again on Monday and they still had not found the other box then. I picked them up one at a time and told them "you think mummy and daddy so bad to you all only give you one house arh. They looked at me puzzedly as I patted their heads and then put them back down. Due to the high level of the soil, they could actually, at some parts, reach their paws to cling onto the glass edge and struggle to wiggle themselves up. But once they peer over and see nowhere to grip onto, they give up. Once I put my face so near to gerby that she tried to climb onto my nose!

The way they dig is really fascinating. When they find a burrow of interest, you can see their interest being multiplied by a zillion, and they will dig till they cant dig any deeper, before running back to the start and digging again. As a result their burrow is seldom a steep side in the direction of their digging. It ends up smooth! Maybe the sand dunes of the desert are made by a million gerbils doing that! Oh man, I wanna live in the desert (kidding). Or maybe there are huge gigantic monstrous invisible gerbils. Well, I'll save that for an "I told you so" years later =P

Go herby gerby! =)