Moonblog Journal

Okay, so I meant to write yesterday,  and didn’t.  So, now I can wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year all in one fell swoop. 

Quite a bit has happened since I last wrote.  I bought a new hamster, so that brought my total to 6.  There are the 3 little ones I got from Missy- Lily, Rose and Zinnia and 3 bigs ones, Jack (I wasn’t sure if she was a boy or a girl, and lo and behold, she’s a girl, but I never changed the name), Honeysuckle, and Bramble (Bram), my new boy.

Saturday night, I cleaned the big ones’ cage, then I got ready to clean the little ones’ cage.  I have always put the 3 little ones in the big cage so that I can clean it, and never has there been a problem before last Saturday night.

When I introduced Bram to the girls in the big tank a few days ago, Jack got very territorial.  Honeysuckle, on the other hand, decided she’d get frisky with Bram and they started mating.  (Incidentally, I’m now I’m on baby watch.)  I don’t know if Jack ever mated with Bram or not since her favorite thing to do seemed to be to chase Bram right back up to the second level if he dared to come down below.

I put Zinnia in the big tank first, and before I ever got the chance to round up the other two to put in the tank, Jack went after Zinnia, and it was for keeps.  By the time I was able to break them apart and get Zinnia back out of there, her belly had been cut and she was bleeding, not to mention terrified.  I took her into my bedroom and put neosporin on her belly and on her paws where there were defensive wounds, and that is when I noticed she couldn’t use her back legs anymore.  They just kind of hung behind her, and she dragged them.

This, of course, made me feel terrible.  Not only did I put her in the tank, but I inadvertantly got her crippled to boot.  I put her back in with her own cage mates, and they started cleaning her off, and the first night, they took good care of her.  (Zinnia is smaller than the other two, so they always picked on her a little bit if they felt she got in the way).  I checked on her Sunday, and she was doing OK, minus the fact that her legs still weren’t working.  I was so afraid she was going to be dead in the morning, I was just releived she was still breathing.  Monday, Rose and Lily went back to picking on her as usual, but when it came time to sleep, they slept with her because she couldn’t get up the tubes any more.  Tuesday, I went to work, and she was still OK, she was eating and moving around the cage.  I took her out and held her, kissed her on the head and went to work.

Tuesday Evening, I called Mom and was talking to her about getting their little cage from them to put Zinnia in because it was small, one level, and that way, the other two couldn’t pick on her.  Mom and I talked for a while, and she started telling me about Alice, their newest hamster that they added to their collection, when I started looking for Zinnia to check on her.  I started getting frantic when I couldn’t find her, and put Mom on speaker phone so that I could use both hands to look in the bedding for her.

I had run my hands around the bedding several times, and finally, I found her.  I burst into tears and Mom asked what was wrong.  I told her I had found Zinnia, but she was dead.  Not only was she dead, but there was blood in the cage by her, so that meant that either she was killed by one of the other ones, or she died and they started to eat her.  Her head was obscured by the bedding, so I couldn’t see where exactly the injury was, and I didn’t really want to for that matter.  I don’t think that they would have just killed her fighting, so I’m guessing that there was more wrong with her than I was able to see, because they decided to put her out of her misery.  I wish they wouldn’t have, but there was nothing I could do about it since she was already dead.  *sighs*

Jack was still being snarky to Bram, and still being territorial, and after what happened to Zinnia, I knew that I was going to have to put her in another cage because I knew that Honeysuckle and Bram had been mating, which means there is a very good chance that Honeysuckle is pregnant, and I didn’t want Jack to just eat the babies to keep more usurpers from invading.

Now Jack is in a CritterTrail Treehouse, Bram and Honeysuckle are in a 10gallon tank with a topper on it so it has two levels, and Lily and Rose are in a CritterTrail 2, which is rather large for just them, but who knows?  Maybe I’ll be able to use that cage for babies and move them to another home.

Joel buried Zinnia for me because the ground was frozen Tuesday night, so Wednesday morning when I was at work, he put her in the ground for me.

Honeysuckle is sleeping a lot, and Bram is staying on the second level, so I don’t know if she’s pregnant or just getting used to having a different mate in the cage.  I guess I will know by next week. 

Now, that’s my depressing news for this blog entry.  Mayhaps I’ll blog again before the new year.  I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and I hope you have a Happy and Blessed New year.

Fare thee well till next time.. *waves as she slips back into the shadows of cyberspace*

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