Stories about Degus

Degus love everything they can get. Especially toilet paper can make them extremely happy. They take it in their mouth and carry it to the nest. Over there they cut it into small pieces. Degus can also enjoy playing with a toilet role. One time we gave our degus Henk and Isabel a toilet role with no paper on it. They played with it, while we were watching TV. Suddenly, Isabel started squeeking very loud, and she jumped around like she went crazy. We hurried to the degu's cage, and we rightaway saw what had happened.... Isabel's head was stuck in the toilet role !

One morning, we just woke up, we heard Henk squeeking. Normally that's not so strange, because Henk sometimes really was moody. But that morning he continued squeeking for about a quarter of an hour. We went to the degu's cage, and saw Henk sitting on a shelf in front of their nest, squeeking. We didn't see Isabel, so we thought she was in the nest. Usually she takes a look when she hears something, but that time she didn't come out of the nest at all. Something was going on... We took the lid from the degu's nest, and didn't see anything strange... Except a dark spot in the corner. When we looked once again we found out what was this dark spot. It were six babies that had just been born !

Usually a lime-stone was hanging in our degu's cage. But our degus didn't do much with this stone, it just hang there. But then we were not at home in the weekend, and when we came home again we started.... Our carpet was completely white next to the cage ! That weekend our degus (eight degus at that time) had decided to start gnawing the lime-stone. It was totally destroyed in just two days ! We were glad to find out that the carpet could be cleaned....

At the time our degu babies were six weeks old, we decided to bring four of them and their parents to the pet's store. We kept two baby females, that we named after their mother: Isa and Belle. These two ladies were very frightened right after we took away their parents, but after a few weeks this went much better. Isa and Belle were much more used to us than their parents, and we could relatively easily take them out of their cage. Once in a week we cleaned their cage, and at that time we put them in their transport-cage for a while. It was a normal, plastic, transport-cage, with a little plastic lid on it. These two clever ladies soon discovered that the lid was made of plastic, and that it could easily be destroyed. Once they started gnawing at it, they fully broke of the lid in three times ! And at that time we had a problem... Where could we put Isa and Belle, while cleaning their cage?? Buying another transport-cage wouldn't make much sense.... After a few weeks I knew how to solve the problem. We bought a little hamstercage, made of iron. It's much bigger than such a plastic transport-cage. It needs more room, but has two big advantages: First, the degus can't destroy it easily. Second, the degus have more room in it, which makes it more fun for them to stay in it for a while.

When my husband and I came back from a day out with our dog, my son told me that he had seen a real weird animal in the gutter. First I didn't see any animal, but the next morning I also saw it: In the gutter, there really was a strange animal, which I had never seen before. It was curiously watching our dogs, that were playing beneath the gutter. I thought the animal could be a rodent, and I decided to search for it on the internet. At the degu website I found a picture of the rodent, that we had called Kareltje at that time. After I contacted Melina (who made the degu website) I knew that it wouldn't survive a Dutch winter. From that time I gave the degu some food and water every day, in the hope that it would become less shy, so that I could pick it up after a while. Last week I came to know that a neighbour had warned someone to destroy this "vermin", and they would put poison in the gutter soon. It was time to rescue Kareltje... I always gave Kareltje food in a large tin. I thought about it and decided to glue a peanut in the tin. This way, Kareltje would need extra time to take the food, and I would have enough time to close the tin. And that's how I catched Kareltje. After five weeks of living in the gutter Kareltje has now a good home with friends of mine. They can even feed him by hand.

Off course we wondered how a degu could turn up in the gutter. After talking to some neighbours we found out that someone in our neighbourhood had put the degu in the gutter. They didn't want the animal anymore, and thought it was a good idea to dump it in the gutter. They did the same with a big spider, but I'm glad that I didn't find that one in my gutter !