Braveheart

 A year and a half ago, we 'rescued' two gerbil sisters from a friend who had them for a class pet, but had stopped teaching, brought the gerbils home, and then learned her cat thought they would make a better snack than pets.

I had originally planned on taking the gerbils to my classroom, but within a week of bringing them home, our campus told us that to cut costs, air conditioning would be non-existent each day from 5 PM until 6 AM.  Um, in Texas, that just means it gets too hot in a building for critters.  Needless to say, the gerbils stayed at our house.

We knew the girls had been born in February of 2009 and that most domestic gerbils live to be 2-5 years old.  No big deal.

Braveheart earned her name for being so bold, and Sissy earned hers equally as fairly.  Ha!
Bailey was introduced to the gerbils and fell in love!  Sister play time is still a big deal at our house.  Now with Aggie Belle in the family, she loves it too!

Bailey and Braveheart sharing some sibling love.

Sadly, Braveheart reached her full gerbil life today and died curled up in her favorite climbing tube.  At 2 1/2, she lived a full gerbil girl life.  She's now joined Igor in the Ozinga Pet Cemetery in our backyard.  Braveheart certainly kept us on our toes for a year and a half.  She loved to hide behind the piano or tease Bailey by sitting under my curio cabinet-in sight, but out of reach during a game of chase.  Braveheart was a cheeky gerbil!  She even spent two nights inside the metal casing of my clothes dryer while I was in Zambia because Isaac didn't think she and Sissy needed his supervision while he cleaned their cage.  Um, Bailey chases them around, but he's not a qualified babysitter!  After Isaac took a part two sides of the dryer, she made it back to her cage.  The best part of that story is that she came out at night and ate from her food dish that we left out for her, but heave forbid she eat while anyone could 'rescue' her. 
 

Sissy and Braveheart munching on peanuts.

For now, Sissy is still a happy gerbil girl, enjoying as much attention as she can muster from the dogs.  Who knew dogs would love playing with, instead of hunting, a gerbil, but ours sure do.  I love that we get a little taste of Eden each day in our home!