Splitting the Tank, Day 13 - No Success

Our conclusions from our split-tank experiment are as follows:

• Tig, while he has begun sleeping near the mesh AND greeting Pendy through the mesh in the morning, continues to attempt to bite Pendy's nose off during all supervised play dates (of which there were few, for this reason).

• Pendy seems to have developed a little bit of  "gerbil depression" from having gone from a full-sized 20-25 gallon gerbilarium to half that. The fact that he is sharing this space with his arch-nemesis is not helping, either.

• Both gerbils seem their happiest when they are out (separately) on free runs, supervised by myself and C. Gerbils are generally social creatures, but these little guys seem very happy with their respective independence.

So what are we going to do?

We've decided to buy another tank, and allow our boys to live peacefully side-by-side...in separate tanks. It's not fair to Pendy to have to wait so long in such a small space, when he is used to a pretty large tank. Poor Tig has always lived in a small space, so hopefully it will make his day when he gets his very own gerbilarium with a wheel, and toys, and places to burrow!

Plus, it is Christmas, so we wrote a letter to Santa Paws asking him to grant this little gerbil wish. It will make holiday transportation of the boys very difficult! But it will be worth it in the end.

Most of the split-tank stories I researched ended up being tales (or "tails", hehe) of success. We followed the recommendations pretty closely, but we still ended up unsuccessful. But just like people, I guess some gerbils will just never get along!

Fail-Whale, Rodent Style