Post by fluffylovey on Apr 23, 2016 4:51:54 GMT -8
Hi everyone...
I woke up this morning to find my little 2yr 7month old agouti boy Watson had died in his sleep. I am extremely upset by this but also extremely confused because I essentially don't know what killed him, so any help would be priceless because I want to find out what took my little man from me too soon
So the last week, he developed some soft diarrhoea type faeces, which I posted about in a previous thread. He had no other symptoms aside from the diarrhoea until a few days ago when he started drinking a huge amount of water and urinating a large amount too. He still seemed to have the diarrhoea as well.
Then yesterday evening, I came in from work and put my hand in the cage to pick him up to say hi (which I do most days), and he was acting completely off. He was jumpy and limo at the same time and very nearly jumped out my hands, and he also bit me which he has hand on heart never ever done before out of malice (he occassionally mistook my finger for a seed :')). I put him back in the cage and he seemed to be almost drunkenly falling around, trying to climb his ladder but falling over backwards and so on. He then started twitching a lot and eventually rolled into a corner of the cage and sat very still breathing very hard and I assumed he'd just had his first stroke or seizure. I knew to leave him alone then and I put him into a dark warm room to recover with his tankmate. I checked on him throughout the evening and he didn't really move at all but was breathing pretty heavily and rapidly up until about 10:30pm.
When I got up at 8am he was gone, and he was going cold and a little stiff so he must have gone in the small hours of the morning
when I picked him up out the tank I also noticed his right eye had gone white but it didn't look like trauma, just like the cornea had gone white.
If anyone has any ideas as to what has happened here I would be so grateful, because I'm honestly at a loss. He was perfectly healthy only 2 weeks ago and has never had a health issue before
There is also the issue of his now 'widowed' tankmate Sherlock. It was heartbreaking to him in the night sat faithfully by Watson's side, and this morning he was sat near him looking genuinely sad. If gerbils could cry I think he would have, and he's been so sad this morning too. He's still doing his gerbil-y things like digging and drinking and eating etc, but he keeps going back to the corner Watson died in and searching, despite me completely cleaning the tank out
Will he get over this on his own? He's 2 1/2 so I don't know if trying to introduce him to a new gerbil would be a good idea or not...
I woke up this morning to find my little 2yr 7month old agouti boy Watson had died in his sleep. I am extremely upset by this but also extremely confused because I essentially don't know what killed him, so any help would be priceless because I want to find out what took my little man from me too soon
So the last week, he developed some soft diarrhoea type faeces, which I posted about in a previous thread. He had no other symptoms aside from the diarrhoea until a few days ago when he started drinking a huge amount of water and urinating a large amount too. He still seemed to have the diarrhoea as well.
Then yesterday evening, I came in from work and put my hand in the cage to pick him up to say hi (which I do most days), and he was acting completely off. He was jumpy and limo at the same time and very nearly jumped out my hands, and he also bit me which he has hand on heart never ever done before out of malice (he occassionally mistook my finger for a seed :')). I put him back in the cage and he seemed to be almost drunkenly falling around, trying to climb his ladder but falling over backwards and so on. He then started twitching a lot and eventually rolled into a corner of the cage and sat very still breathing very hard and I assumed he'd just had his first stroke or seizure. I knew to leave him alone then and I put him into a dark warm room to recover with his tankmate. I checked on him throughout the evening and he didn't really move at all but was breathing pretty heavily and rapidly up until about 10:30pm.
When I got up at 8am he was gone, and he was going cold and a little stiff so he must have gone in the small hours of the morning
when I picked him up out the tank I also noticed his right eye had gone white but it didn't look like trauma, just like the cornea had gone white.If anyone has any ideas as to what has happened here I would be so grateful, because I'm honestly at a loss. He was perfectly healthy only 2 weeks ago and has never had a health issue before
There is also the issue of his now 'widowed' tankmate Sherlock. It was heartbreaking to him in the night sat faithfully by Watson's side, and this morning he was sat near him looking genuinely sad. If gerbils could cry I think he would have, and he's been so sad this morning too. He's still doing his gerbil-y things like digging and drinking and eating etc, but he keeps going back to the corner Watson died in and searching, despite me completely cleaning the tank out
Will he get over this on his own? He's 2 1/2 so I don't know if trying to introduce him to a new gerbil would be a good idea or not...
