George and Georgina

George and Georgina are Mongolian gerbils. Gerbils live in many parts of the world, but the ones from Mongolia and Egypt make the best pets.

They’re quite a recent addition to the list of pet animals – my old book of 1907 didn’t know anything about them – and they’re fun to keep because they’re such busy creatures. Some animals just lie about and don’t do much, but George and Georgina are on the go all the time. They don’t seem to spend a lot of time sleeping, and they’re very nosy, sitting up on their hind legs to see what’s going on. They take great care building a nest, and then they pull it all to bits again and rebuild it in a different way in a different place, usually making an entrance tunnel. And if they have to, they can move very fast. I bet George and Georgina can outrun Lupin.

Feeding them is easy. Hamster food is fine, and they like canary seed too, and dog biscuits. And though they don’t drink much, they should have a drinking bottle.

There are some don’ts about gerbil keeping:

Don’t pick up your gerbil by its tail – the skin could pull away from the bone. If you’re gentle, and offer something nice like a sunflower seed, it’ll soon sit happily in your hand.

Don’t give them newspaper for making nests with. Ordinary paper is all right, but the ink used for newspapers can be harmful.

Don’t just keep one gerbil. They’re very companionable animals, so it’s best to have two. If they turn out to be George and George, or Georgina and Georgina, well, that’s fine. At least in a year’s time you’ll still only have two, and not two hundred!

And there’s one last don’t. Don’t leave baby gerbils with their parents once they’ve been weaned. If your gerbils should have babies, when they’re three weeks old, take them away from their parents and put them in another cage. Because before you can say ‘George and Georgina’, the next lot will appear.