Runtess's behavior

[TJ's Rodent Ranch]

So in the interest of not completely de-railing the photo contest thread, I'm moving the topic over here. 

I entered the photo of runtess into the photo contest, and the topic of her behavior soon followed. (to sum it up in the most basic way). 
So here is a brief run down of Runtess's life, so that you have the full picture. 

Runtess was part of a litter of five, and as her name suggests, she was the runt of the litter. Her mom was Ziggy, who a few people might remember from my thread 'mother attacking her pups' which I posted about two years ago. Usually, as far as I've seen, the runt always dies in the first three days from being premature and unable to survive outside of the womb. Runtess was extremely premature. I figured she wouldn't survive, and yet she somehow still did. Ziggy attacked her and her siblings, and she along with three of the others survived and was fostered by another mother, with another litter of five. So she was raised with nine siblings. She always had a severe head tilt, was deaf, and had pretty obvious neurological issues. She was very sweet but couldn't hold still and it took a long time for her to trust me. she grew up with her mother and two other siblings, before she seemed to feel overwhelmed. She was then moved to live only with her sister, Poppy, but still she seemed to feel stressed with another gerbil. So eventually she ended up living alone.

She turned into what could be called a 'ghost' gerbil. I spent lots of time with her, but it was only towards the end of her life that she really began to trust me. I tried to introduce her to another gerbil, which did work out, but they were only together for a short time when some aggressive signs started to show through on Runtess's part, and so I introduced the other female (WD40) to one of my males and Runtess lived alone again. She seemed to be doing okay with just me, and then one day her personality just completely turned. 

She had buried her water bottle, so I reached in the tank to resituate it, and she sprang out of her den and grabbed onto me like a Pitbull. She started shaking her head, trying to (in morbid wording) actually take a chunk out of me. I managed to get her off (just barely) but not before she gave me a pretty nasty bite. Luckily, because she had gone for such a large bite, she hadn't actually been able to do too much damage, because her jaw wouldn't clamp shut as easily, but I will say I was nursing that bite for three days. 

So, I tried to work with her again. I gave her benefit of the doubt, but every single time it only got worse, and every time that I reached into the tank she gave me terrible bites. I tried working with a leather glove, but she kept breaking through and she never improved. I began to see that her quality of life was just as poor as mine when I was with her. Eventually, (now I know that a lot of people probably won't agree with this, if so I'd love to talk with you about it, and discuss it a bit, because it was a very hard decision for me to make, but I do stand by it for several reasons) I was contacted by a man that I work with, that asked me if I would sell him to her for a snake. He said he would euthanize her before hand before giving her to the snake, so when I thought about it, and realized that she was having a miserable time, and it would be more merciful, I agreed. I was informed that late December she was euthanized. 

The story of Runtess really is quite sad, and I'm truly sorry that it ended that way, but I felt very cornered in when I saw what was happening to her, and I felt I had no other choice. 
Since then, I see why it really can sometimes be most merciful for gerbils like this to die before they live, in a sense. Runtess definitely changed my view on a lot of things.

[Markpd]

I remember your story of the mum attacking the pups, was it really 2 years ago already!?
Wow that is a rapid change in personality, sounds like something severely neurological had gone wrong there!
And that is a sad story going from trusting you to a savage gerbil!, sorry to hear that

I think euthanasia was quite understandable, not sure I would give a deceased pet as snake food, but it wouldn't have made any difference to her!
The only thing that would concern me is whether the snake owner was experienced at putting down animals (rodents) humanely....

(Btw, I've split up your text as I was finding it very hard to follow sentences mid paragraph).

[TJ's Rodent Ranch]

Yes, it was very difficult. It was very sad, and I really wanted it to work. I think I would have tried more, but when I saw that she herself was suffering, and I started to realize that she wasn't going to get any happier, than I knew that I had to make the hard choice, since it would be rather selfish. I'd only be doing it for me.
Yes, I often sell the man gerbils (as pets, of course, not snake food!). He's a pet store owner and knows a lot about all animals, so I trust him to have done it correctly. I also thought it was a little weird, but then it seemed to me that it wouldn't make any difference for her, and although sounds perhaps a little odd, might be even better, since her body could help a snake.

[LilyandDaisy]

Thanks for sharing this. I would guess that Runtess had something not quite right neurologically from the beginning, which affected her both physically and mentally/cognitively/behaviourally.

It's possible that with her cognitive issues, she found it very difficult to understand other gerbils, or they found it difficult to understand, which might have made living with another gerbil quite stressful for her.

I can absolutely understand your decision to have her euthanised as sometimes these kinds of gerbils can just have such a stressful existence and you do have to wonder whether it's worth it.

I referenced my gerbil Daisy in the photo competition thread. She was always a completely normal gerbil (physically and mentally) until at 3 years old she started developed a mystery illness which her sister had previously died from. This mystery illness had neurological elements. Although her sister Lily had appeared mentally normal until the end, Daisy started acting in ways that seemed a bit paranoid. She was living with a young gerbil named Tilly and began to act excessively wary of her, would seemingly misinterpret behaviour and randomly chase her out of nowhere, and generally seemed very stressed. She was happier when I moved them to a smaller cage and I suspect that this was because she felt it was easier to maintain control of a smaller territory, as well as keep tabs on what Tilly was doing when there was less space between them. I always caveat this story with the acknowledgement that we probably miss upwards of 95% of the communication that goes on between gerbils, so it's possible that Tilly was intentionally giving off some signals that made Daisy feel rightfully threatened, though I never spotted anything myself. I think it's at least equally likely that Daisy was feeling paranoid due to the effects of her illness, whether that was a direct result of damage to her brain, or more indirectly due to an awareness that she was getting weaker and Tilly was getting bigger.

And then on her last day, she had a kind of seizure/episode of thrashing around. Lily had also had the exact same type of episode towards the end. Unlike Lily, Daisy didn't seem to be able to recover from it. It left Daisy in a terrible state of agitation, where she just kept running around the tank in laps, only stopping when she collapsed from exhaustion. I believe that she had completely lost her mind by that point so she did have to be put to sleep.

I've often wondered if as part of the overall mysterious illness, Daisy had some kind of dementia or progressive brain damage which caused her behavioural changes.