Nala and Noddie have peace talks after a fight.
The Family
Maggie – January 6th, 2012
The end of 2011 didn’t bring much new for us. I gained weight, leaving Nala, the oldest goo, as the smallest. I still have a baby-face, but I’m just a little bigger than my oldest sissy. Noddie has gained weight, too! Dad says she looks like a furry light bulb.
One day, mom said our nails were too sharp, and she’d had enough. Since we umm.. did our business.. all over the old sandpaper nail trimmer insert for our wheel, we hadn’t had much to trim our nails lately. Mom took some of dad’s skateboard grip tape and trimmed it down. It was funny watching her do this. First, she tried to use scissors. But she ruined the scissors because that stuff was rough. Then she tried using a big pocket knife, but she cut the carpet! Good thing it was just a cheap area rug, but boy was she mad anyway. It works better than the old stuff we got with the wheel, and was apparently only 16% the price! For the first week, Mom kept picking us all up to check our feet for sores from the new insert—we hated that! I hate being on my back!
The older goos’ birthdays came and went— they got a new hut to sleep in, but the food-givers said they have to share. Noddie’s and my birthdays are coming up quickly; I don’t know what we’ll get! We have everything we could ever want! None of us were born on exactly the same day—but it’s easiest to split it up two and two.
Christmas was nice—we got lots of treats. But New Year’s… something reeeeeally bad happened. Noddie tried to kill Nala, and got hurt! You’ll have to ask them about it though.. I stayed out of it.
Kimber – January 6th, 2012
So, I’m the biggest goo. By far. Just go look at our weight chart. So why do those two think they are in competition with each other for dominance?! I’m obviously the meanest… When I was adopted, the lady told my mum and dad, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have one of her brothers? This one is a *@!$%.” Mum said I was adorable and of course they wanted me—because I’m a girl! But I must say… the lady was right. I have a serious attitude problem. But anyway, so New Year’s Day, mum was taking a nap in her new rocker and dad was on the computer, Maggie was foraging for food that had been lost at breakfast, and I was trying to take a nap, when I heard this AWFUL noise coming from the other two! Our normal fights are typically boxing matches and we don’t make loud noises, just chatter. More serious fights can involve one degu backing the other into a corner and beating her up, while the absolute most ultimate sin is to fight locked in a tight ball squalling at the top of your lungs while lunging for face, ears, eyes, throat and whatever else we can scratch or bite. I don’t know who started it, but it was obviously about who was the lead-goo. Pshh. Mum jumped over the furniture, yanked the cage doors open and broke them up, but not before there were injuries. Nala had a little bruise on her ear, while Noddie’s was bleeding, and mum’s pinky finger was bit HARD. Nala and I stayed on the top level of our huge cage, while Mum tossed Noddie and Maggie downstairs and shut the gate. A little later, dad tried to put the fighting goos together in neutral territory on the carpet (but in a pen so they couldn’t escape!) but they broke out into a fight again. They were separated again, and dad said it would be a while before we could all get put back together. Experts say that after fights like these, often the fighting pair can never live together peacefully again. Maggie, Mum, Dad and I were all soooooo worried about this. Then dad found out that the fights between degus going through their first mating season after puberty (like Noddie, Maggie and I, but mum says not Nala, this is her second) are typically the worst and most frequently occurring type. They frequently remain enemies until after mating season—that could be four months from now! Today though, we were all put together in the upstairs part of our cage. It’s currently been 57 minutes, and no chasing or fighting has occurred. It was touch-and-go there for the first few minutes, but we’re hoping they’ve got it worked out now!
Nala – January 6th, 2012
I don’t really know what happened. I’m always so afraid of everything that I try to stay low to the ground and hidden and out of everyone’s way. But Noddie… on New Year’s… she wouldn’t leave me alone! She started sniffing at my rump, too intensely! I sniffed her back at first, ‘cause that’s just polite, but then she started getting mean and chasing me! I ran away from her, and she followed to sniff some more. So I slapped her on the nose a little hoping she’d get the hint that I just want to mind my own business. But I guess that did it. Next thing I knew we were rolling around on the ground and she bit my ear so I bit her ear… but I guess I bite harder. Who knew that the smallest degu is the toughest fighter? But anyway, Mom separated us and almost every day this week Dad has tried putting us back together until Noddie starts chasing me. Only once have we got into a fight again. That was bad—but no new injuries. I may have hurt my foot, but I’ll never tell.
Noddie – January 6th, 2012
I am the dominant goo. Or at least I think I am. New Year’s was nothing—everyone is overreacting. We’re related, after all… somehow at least. We’re all so inbred from the place we were rescued from we have to be related! But anyway, families fight. We got over it, didn’t we? Everyone is so shocked that it took us so little time. When we were separated, Nala and I missed each other. When she was upstairs and I was downstairs, and the ladder was shut making a gate, I would put my paws up and reach as far up to the ladder as I could, while she would sit on the ladder and look down at me, and we would make cuddle noises through the bars. It was heartbreaking, I’m sure. That was my goal. I was trying to tell them, Look! I’m not going to eat her!
Speaking of eating, we got a new food! It’s actually guinea pig food… I don’t know about that. But, the food-givers say it has NO molasses, which could kill us because of the sugar, and MUCH less protein, which is good for us because we have special diet needs and protein hurts us, but also less fiber, which means we just have to have more hay! We love hay. Mum is allergic to it though, so dad has to give it to us. I like eating. I’ve gained almost as much weight as Kimmy! But that was before the new food… I guess I’ll eat anything.
Collaborative Blog 6/29/11 (…because mommy doesn’t know who is who when we move at lightning speed!)
Today, Mom let us run around the house. One of us liked running in the wheel she put in the middle of the floor. All of us liked chewing. We collectively chewed on: Dad’s computer chair, the computer desk, the legs on the couch, the coffee table (more on this later), the book case, one of the books in this case, the tv stand, Mom’s toes, door hinges, one taste of a baseboard, the door stopper, and the tissue box. Actually, one of us has made a nest in the tissue box, and also made off with a bunch of the tissues. Who knows where we took them. The coffee table… Mom was holding oats down for us to come up and take. She had one, but she shifted her foot and scared me, and I ran headlong into the post of the coffee table. Mom didn’t think it was possible for us to be so clumsy, but we showed her. We don’t like the hallway. There’s a stretch of play area with nowhere to hide. We run as fast as we can down this stretch. Today though, we weren’t as afraid of this area. We sniffed under the closed doors, and put our paws up on the doors to see if we could get in. I smelled lots of chemicals behind one door. Mom says I couldn’t go in here, because that’s where Mom and Dad keep all the cleaning supplies and the BIG vacuum that terrifies us. Another door smelled like that tiny little room they took us in when we were little, to introduce us to being out of the cage. Mom and Dad go in this little room a couple times a day. I have no idea why. Mom says they go in there because it’s not okay for people to find a corner to potty like we do. I don’t get it. The other room… I have no idea what’s behind it. Nala says she ran in there once, and there was a HUGE play area with lots of boxes to hide behind and chew on. Noddie says this is the place Dad takes her to eat her breakfast sometimes when Mom isn’t up yet. It must be a big hammock in there. The fourth door…. Every half hour or so, a really loud noise comes from behind this door. I don’t like it at all. It’s awfully cold there too. We just left it alone. After almost two hours Mom said we all had to go back to our cage. I guess we were chewing on too much, but I think mom just looked down at the wrong moment. We were grooming the furniture!
Maggie – June 26, 2011
I’ve been kinda rotten. I’ve taken to chewing on knuckles. There’s something about the texture I just like nibbling. I don’t really hurt, I don’t think. I don’t bite NEARLY as hard as Kimmy. A couple days ago, Kimmy was launching herself to bite one of us, and Daddy got in the way. Kimmy bit Daddy. Oh my- he was mad. Mommy thought it was funny, and Mommy got in trouble too. Everyone loves Kimmy. She doesn’t think so sometimes, but it’s just because she’s so bad! She’ll always be the baby. Just like me! Mom says I was the tiniest bebe goo she’d ever seen, and was so surprised she got to take me home. No one really knows why I was so much smaller than Noddie. We had a brother that got a home the same day as us. He was almost as small as me, but not as big as Noddie. Mom thinks Noddie and I might have been born at the same time but to different degu mommies. Sometimes when first time mom degus have a single baby, they don’t understand what happened. Other mommy goos adopt this baby. Mom also thinks it’s possible that Noddie’s degu mommy was killed like a bunch of my siblings and other relatives. When mom found us, there were way too many degus in the aquarium and there were lots of fights. Some big bulky degus were killing the smaller ones. Degus don’t do this under normal conditions. Degu Daddies raise the babies along with the Degu Mommies. This tank Mom rescued us from had too many goos, not enough wheels, no toys, no baths, and likely stale food. Mom wishes she could have rescued all of them.