> cell mate when she is eventually captured. Professional opinions > will be welcomed by the prison authorities, and can be sent to the > above e-mail address. > Correspondent Laura O'Brien, reporting from Dublin.
Put her partner on the floor by where the trap is for a few minutes, with an assistant. Hold onto the partner. She may show up out of curiosity. If not, then the scent of her partner may draw her later. As far as a ladder...remember gerbils can jump. I use a piece of 5cm (2") pvc pipe about 45cm (19") long, placed near a wall. At one end I put something that will plug it completely enough that the gerbil cannot get past, the other I keep a bar towel (small cotton towel). Get her to lope around the room at gerbil speed, and go into the pipe. Move very fast, plug the end in the direction she was going and in the same blur, drop the towel securely over the other end. She will reverse in the tube, and can't get through the towel..your hand goes over that and she can't get out or a good chomp on your hand. Lift with toweled end in air, and transport her back to confinement. I have a live trap and the gerbils can manage to clean off the cemented on feast of banana chips and raisins with peanut butter glue, put down the dead center of the pan, without it going off (and it's set to trip for something about the size of a runty baby dwarf campbell hamster). The corner them in a tube is the only thing that works for me. Putting their mate by the tube, and even getting the mate to drop/slide through the tube, will transfer the smell and draw them. Deb Rebel's Rodent Ranch [I take a dim view of any small animal out AWOL without a day pass...trust me, liberty cards are impossible to get.]
