theingrams4's Xanga

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 13:21:48 GMT

I just got an e-mail from one of the degu groups I belong to, that talks about breeding. It turns out that female degus hump male degus sometimes, and even same sex pairs hump each other?!?! Just a form of activity I guess. So perhaps Chip and Dale are both male after all? We've now had them three months, and no signs of any pregnancies, which is good. But they sure like to do their boxing matches, and the occasional humping?!

Now that Dale's injuries have COMPLETELY healed, they look exactly alike so we've found another way to tell them apart (other than their personalities)...they have different looking tails. One has a uniformly furry one (CHIP), while the other looks like it's balding in a couple places (DALE). Now it will be funny if the bald spots get covered with fur!

Cassie is not as interested in her mice anymore, so I am now the one cleaning and feeding the mice...I'm not really surprised. Now she wants a gerbil since they are less smelly and easier to care for. She won't be getting one anytime soon! Garnet, Jupiter, and Venus has started biting a little bit too; wonder why? They certainly don't bite like Scaredy Mouse, otherwise they would have been gone a long time ago, but they like to nip every once in a while. And their teeth are sharp !

Billy continues to just be Billy...though lately I have been hearing and seeing him dig more in his cage...other than that, he's just a sleeping and eating Billy...love those peanuts and Cheerios!

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 13:57:49 GMT

We are now allowing Chip and Dale to run around almost the entire apartment almost daily (except bathrooms and laundry area), and they exceptionally loves going into both kids' rooms since they have a lot of nooks and crannies (also known as MESS!) to explore. They are always easy to find because eventually they come back out, especially when they get tired. Dale now has just a hint of a scar from his injuries in, very hard to see. I'm sure we are calling Chip by Dale's name and vice versa often. No hint of any possible pregnacies yet either so maybe they were just "playing" HAHAHA.

Meanwhile, the mice and Billy continue to do very well.

Also, Amanda is thinking about getting a RAT soon, since her birthday is this week. WE'LL SEE.................

Thursday, February 05, 2004

Thu, 05 Feb 2004 01:10:41 GMT

We said goodbye to some of our mice today - Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune out of the boys' cage, and Cleopatra, Christmas, and Scaredy Mouse (THE BITER!) out of the ladies' cage. The boys were just getting toooo smelly, plus both the boys and girls were too crowded. With just three females and two males, they have a lot more room and will be a lot happier.

I am beginning to think that Dale is the male now, instead of Chip, since I saw him(?) humping Chip. Of course, the other time, I thought Chip was doing the Wild Thing too, so who knows?

Dale's injuries from January have left scars that are getting hard to see, which will make it harder to tell them apart Dale has learned now to jump off the leather sofa onto the ground instead of jumping off the computer chair, but Dale jumps off of one end, while Chip jumps off the other...pretty funny, and at least we can tell them apart there! Of course, if you block Dale's spot on the end of the sofa with the computer chair, he will still use the chair. Anyway, they sure love to run around. We try to let them out every evening for about 15 mins. or so, and they go all over the place, including the bedrooms and kitchen. Fortuately, they always come back out, but we still have to chase them!

Billy continues to be Billy...very pickly lately with his food. Loves to be fed by hand and only certain things such as sunflower seeds and nuts. I try not to give him too much of those and just keep his dish filled with the good stuff too.

Sunday, January 25, 2004

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:15:00 GMT

HAHAHA...Amanda was incorrect with the sex on Jupiter the baby mouse...it looks like she's a girl! We have now separated the mice into male and female cages...Scaredy Mouse went first earlier this week to the ladies' cage, then two days ago we put Garnet in with them, and then yesterday Venus was put in there. Today, husband spotted one of the mice trying to hump another; then on closer inspection, it looked like Jupiter is a female. They do detract their testicles sometimes, but with Jupiter it looked like there were none while the other boys it was pretty obvious. So today Jupiter went into the girl cage. I don't think the boys could have impregnated the ladies, even Jupiter since they are still pretty young, but better to be safe than sorry...and of course if there are any (more) mistakes, we'll find out soon enough!!

Dale has figured out how to get on the floor now..at first it was just Chip doing it, now Dale too. Dale uses the computer chair to get down, while Chip will jump off the leather couch. They certainly like to run all over the place! I'm thinking we might need some gates (like they use to keep toddlers out of rooms) or perhaps those enclosures they use for bunnies on the floor.

Billy seems to know when I feed the others...he used to not care one way or the other, but almost everytime I get the food ready for the degus or mice, he's awake looking for tidbits. Pretty funny. I think he likes it being around the others, though I'm sure a big fight to the death would ensue if they were ever put together!

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 13:59:43 GMT

We have finally named the babies, but as predicted we lost the remaining runt, named Pluto.

Here they all are, including Pluto They are all male except for Venus and Pluto, so now we are down to just one female baby left. Next week, Venus, Scaredy Mouse, and Garnet will join our other ladies in the other cage, and the guys will stay where they are.

My husband has a CHIP on his shoulder!! Here's one of our degus caught in action...they are speedy little guys and hard to get photos of but this one came out good. Our two degus occasionally fight for some reason, but then they become buddys afterwards.

Here's a new photo of Billy the Gerbil, now almost two years older than the photo on this weblog...doesn't look like he's aged a bit, does it?!?!?!?!

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 15:22:40 GMT

Lost another mouse runt on Monday or Tuesday, down to 8 babies, but it wouldn't surprise me if I looked in the cage right now and found only 7, since that last runt wasn't doing so well yesterday. I purchased a larger cage for the mommas/babies, and added a wheel (which they definitely like!), and a Timber Hide-Away , with the jam jar from their smaller cage on top of the hideaway. I figured with the babies getting bigger, the mommas need more space, and exercise.

My husband has decided that Chip and Dale will be the official names of our degus. Chip will be the unscarred, adventurous one, who likes to jump off our couch and run all over the house, going underneath things, while Dale will be the scarred one, who runs really fast and loves the computer chair and climbing on whoever might be sitting in it. Fortunately, they are unisex names so no matter which one is male or female, or of the same sex (I think Chip is male and Dale is female personally!), the names will work.

I've uploaded a few photos I took of the pets, and they can be found here: http://photos.yahoo.com/serenitymyst2. I will be putting all the pets photos into this folder from now on (unless I move them again HAHAHA!)

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 19:58:29 GMT

We are now down to 9 babies, and two of them are runty, but the other 7 are very robust and doing fine..getting big and furry. The three remaining babies from Garnet should be opening their eyes pretty soon.

Other than that, not much to report...the degus are doing well, as well as the other mice (mommas and non-mommas) and of course Billy.

Next entry I will hope to have links to good sites, and soon I hope to have some photos!

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 20:01:15 GMT

It's been over two years since my last entry in this weblog, and there's been some large changes...First of all, this log has changed to "The Ingram Family Pets Page" since my daughter Amanda, who this site originally was named for, hasn't owned mice since 2001. In fact, if you read my last entry before this one, I had mentioned that she had grown disillusioned with the mice...a few days after the entry, she ended up giving all her mice away, keeping the two gerbils she bought in 2001. Sadly, we lost Jimmy the black gerbil in December 2001, but Billy, the orange gerbil survived and continues to live to this day! He is a lot more tame than he was in the beginning, almost never bites at all. In honor of Billy I have changed the picture on this weblog to a photo of Billy taken in 2002.
Meanwhile, up until the day after this past Christmas, Billy was all we had. For Christmas, I decided to let my younger daughter Cassie, get some mice, so she picked up 4 female mice on December 26. One is completely white, which she has called "Christmas", another is white with small patches of brown, including a brown face and a white line on top leading to the white body, called "Garnet", and the other two virtually identical, mostly white with small patches of brown, plus a brown patch over the left eye, named "Scaredy Mouse" and "Cleopatra". Amanda, with her experience with mice, predicted (correctly!), that two of the mice, Garnet and Scaredy Mouse, were pregnant! We put them in a separate cage and waited for the birth. We didn't have to wait long! On December 30, Garnet gave birth to 4 babies, while on January 1, Scaredy Mouse gave birth to 9 babies! However, in the past few days, we have lost 3 babies, one of Garnet's and two of Scaredy Mouse's, so at last count on Monday Jan. 5 was 10 babies. We probably will end up keeping most of them, but we'll see. We are having a problem with Scaredy Mouse..she BITES! She may end up going back to the pet store, and while the others are a little skittish, they don't bite...I hope Scaredy Mouse didn't pass on her BITING trait!!
And finally, we also have 2 of the exotic animals called Degus, whom my husband has tentively namedl Chip and Dale (they were called "Frick" and "Frack" for awhile HAHAHA), purchased also on December 26. They look like large gerbils, and colored similar to a squirrel. They are related to chinchillas and guinea pigs, all belonging to the same family as the rabbit. There isn't a lot of information about the Degu, though there's been some helpful ones online, which I hope to post soon. We had asked for two females, then the pet store said that it looked like all they had were males, so we said we'll take two males, but after researching them online, Amanda suspected one might be a female! And sure enough, I caught them fighting (and I got an injury trying to separate them, to my right pointer finger that still bothers me as I type this) then doing the "WILD THING", if you know what I mean. One of the Degus actually got a small (minor) injury to the face, which makes it a lot easier to tell them apart, but we still don't know which is male, which is female, since research says they can hump each other, doesn't matter who the male or female is. I'm just wondering, what if they are both male or both femaleand are just being silly?!?!?!?! I guess we'll find out in approximately 3 months, as the websites say the gestational period for degus is 90 days; plus, the babies are born with fur and with eyes open.
I'm hoping to get some photos going of all the current pets sometime soon, and they will NOT be posted at my family webpage anymore, since I am out of space and they ended up deleting a lot of my photos, including our old mice pics, so I will have them in an online photo album. When it happens, a link will be posted here and at the family page.
Hope everyone online is doing well, and it's great to be back!

Tuesday, November 20, 2001

Tue, 20 Nov 2001 13:24:20 GMT

UPDATE!: November 20, 2001 - We had a scare over the weekend with Flower. On Saturday I decided to check on them out of the blue (when Amanda is home I don't check on them as much, since she is there to look at and care for them), and I saw the still nameless black baby wedged in between the top of the water bottle and the screened top..so I got her loose and put her down...then I noticed Flower was REALLY stuck between the water bottle and the metal piece that hangs the bottle up...she was really wedged in there tightly and I was really worried that she was suffocating or suffering from internal injuries. I called Amanda and she and I got her unwedged. Fortunately she was still alive, but VERY shaken. She went over to a corner and just stayed there shaking for well over an hour. Both Thumbelina and Puff came over and started cleaning her briefly. The next day (Sunday) she was acting like her normal self, and is okay now, but it was a scary moment. The now very young adults are still doing baby things and don't realize they can get stuck since they are bigger now. I check on them alot right now when Amanda is at school since this batch seems like they like to get stuck .

P.S. I have changed the photo here to a photo of one of the females Amanda continues to still have since all three mice (Princess, Angel, and Mr.Mouse) that were pictured in the original picture that has been here since this weblog started, has sadly passed away. Soon (I hope!) when I have more time, there will be new pictures posted at our family home page (http://theingrams4.tripod.com) under "Amanda's Pet Mice". HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Friday, November 16, 2001

Fri, 16 Nov 2001 13:37:05 GMT

UPDATE!: November 16, 2001 - We said goodbye to four of the babies, and ended up keeping 3 of them instead of the 2 that were planned, all females. So our mice count is 7 mice, all of them being females. This SHOULD be the end of our mice baby production line HAHA, which lasted for nearly a year!

Here are the mice we have left:

Thumbelina, who along with Sebastian, is now our oldest mouse (8 months old), black white black combo with a small white dot on the top of her head, black eyes. In the beginning she was so small and runty, also became bald for awhile, but she has since caught up and is now a totally normal mouse.

Sebastian, all black with the tiniest spot of white at the top, black eyes. She looks just like her "mother" (at least we assumed it was ..since the other gals that gave birth at the same time didn't look like her), the late Angel.

Creamsicle, purchased in April as a young adult, so she is probably only a couple weeks younger than Thumbelina and Sebastian, a orangish tan mouse with a small white spot on the top of her head and a whte spot near the rear, red eyes.

Puff, (grey white grey combo, red eyes) the mother of the most recent babies, who was born at the end of May to Baby Chunks (black white black combo) and Smoky the STUD (all grey)...she is the perfect blend of the two mice, since she has Baby Chunk's pattern with Smoky the STUD's coloring. Out of all the babies born during the May group, she was the most friendly and calm.

The "babies" (who are now young adults )

Algernon, all grey with slightly lighter grey face with red eyes..she looks like her grampa Smoky the STUD.

Flower, black white black combo with what looks like a white line that runs down from the top of the black head to the white midsection, slightly jagged. She looks just like the late Skunk, from the same litter as Thumbelina and Sebastian. Being Puff's and Dark Angel's baby, I suppose it's possible, since Baby Chunks and Sebatian (the mom's of Puff and Dark Angel), were produced by the same mom and dad (Angel and Mr. Mouse, who also produced Skunk {we think?}.....And that concludes the mouse genetics lesson for today HAHAHAHAHA!

And finally...Amanda decided to keep an all black mouse that has yet to be named, though if she doesn't come up with any ideas, I think I will call her Inky, or maybe Stain...I'm still debating myself.

She has decided to keep the mice for now, though I think she just doesn't want me to take over HAHA.