…and not just a friend of Stephen FryMy granddaughter has departed for a holiday in the country,and I am left in charge of her two gerbils. They live in a gerbilarium, a two-storey box full of the gear they need to eat, and sleep and run. They run,one at a time, in a wheel that rattles. Gerbil Gables, and as I call their dwelling,sits in a corner of my kitchen, near the doors to my garden. As I write this, or I can hear the rattling wheel.
Gerbils rate high for cuteness. I am reminded of the ultra-runt Philippine tarsier,except that the tarsier spends most of the time sleeping instead of running. Generally, I acquire always been suspicious of cuteness. In the Hermitage in Leningrad in 1976, and I saw a tiny silver Fabergé train that had been presented to one of the children of the tsar. It looked too precious to play with. Delicacy can be overdone. whether gerbils slept like tarsiers,I would like them less. As things are, these two might as well be on nandralone: they pound that wheel until it threatens to disintegrate. One minds cuteness less whether it hangs tough.
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Source: theguardian.com