Enter The Degu

It's really all my fault...
My beloved is a huge cat person, but sadly I am allergic so getting one or even two is out of the question.
As a result when the chance to move in together surfaced we naturally looked for a suitable pet. Upon accompanying a friend to Pets At Home they discovered Degus and fell in love.

Sadly due to the complexities of the rental market we would have no chance to have them in our first home together, but when it came to buying our first house we had the chance to do as we pleased and getting Degu was back on the cards.

In the year between events Bex did a fair bit of research about what they would need.
So without further ado for her birthday we ended up at the pet store the day before her birthday.
Degu are sociable animals and shoud not exist on their own, so we had to get a minimum of two; typically when we went their were three left.
Unable to leave one we ended up taking the last three in the shop.

The car journey home was fairly eventful as they were in three paper thin cardboard boxes.
Fortunately we had gone first thing on a weekday morning so traffic was fairly quiet as in the ten minute journey it took us to get home two of the three had made an attempt at escape by chewing the boxes from the inside.

Fortunately we were warned so had everything set up!
We placed the boxes in the cage in order to let them come out in their own time and Jalapeno bounded out in no time and started exploring and her sister Pimento follow suit soon after, leaving the seemingly terrified Serrano in her box.
Every time she plucked up courage to come out one of her sisters jumped on the roof of her box and scared her back inside.
It took about half an hour to coax her out.
And then the reign of the Goos began!

And they are loose


Exploring



Trying the wheel out for size - when we got them they were too lightweight to turn the wheel without me loosening it first


Finally sleeping off a hard days' chaos



Their positioning between two doors came as a result of buying a low coffee table that was perfect apart from being far too long for the intended location of the Goos. The only place left was the wall between the door to the hall way and the double doors to the kitchen.


This presented a problem as every time we entered the room we came from behind and above (rather like a bird of prey coming across the sun) and they freaked out constantly to the point where they would run and hide - or not as the below picture shows.

Cowering in the corner



This became really distressing for both of us as we were unable to relax in our own living room.
The only workable solution was to mimic the set up at Pets At Home and have them at chest\face height in one of the alcoves so they could only be approached from the front.
Once this was done they were much happier (and so were we) and we could get on with the bonding process.

Higher Ground


Note: This shelf was also how we discovered we needed the house rewired... but that's another story!