Lillian Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>Rachel,
> A couple of months ago my gerbils died of the same thing. The first
>one died almost instantly and the second one died the day after. I
>worked hard on the second one for hours. I took her out of the cage,
>cleaned it, filled it with water, scrubbed it and so on. I then took
>her and doused her in water (despite what people told me), and tried
>getting all of the bugs off. They are just like ticks, except that they
>don't just stay attached, but crawl around. There were too many
>though. They were breeding and more hatched by the minutes. I went as
>far as giving her vitamins through a straw and pumping her chest gently
>to get more oxygen, but the things just wouldn't stop. By the time I
>had most of them gone, I picked her up and she took her last breath in
>my hand. They sucked the blood out of my gerbils and they lost all of
>their weight in no time and were left to skin and bones. I do not know
>what they were, but they sucked blood and were everywhere. They were
>climbing on the cage and in it. I blamed it on the CareFresh bedding
>that I used because once I started using that all of my gerbils started
>dying earleir and having problems, so i went back to the other stuff and
>the ones I have now are fine. Just make sure you clean the cage and
>watch very carefully.
>
>Lillian
It is highly unlikely that blood sucking invertebrates would kill a
mammal. The amount of blood they would need to suck would be simply too
much.
It is much more likely that the gerbils were infested for some time but
had been successfully grooming them out of their coat. On becoming ill,
they ceased grooming so much so the parasites accumulated so much you
became aware of them.
A gerbil suddenly losing a lot of weight is usually sue to tooth
problems that stop it eating.
--
Julian
************************************************************************
* Jackie and Julian *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* National Gerbil Society *
* http://www.gerbils.co.uk/ *
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