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| Name: |
Sevi
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Age: |
Unknown, deceased
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| Gender: |
Male
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Kind: |
Gerbil
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| Home: |
Massachusetts, USA
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This is Sevi, my beloved gerbil. What made him special was how sweet he was. He was also very gentle. Even if startled he wouldn't bite. In the mornings, I would put my hand in his gerbil house to wake him up for breakfast and he would greet me by kissing my fingertips. He would allow me to hold him and kiss him.
I had gone to the pet store to get some supplies and I happened to walk by the small animal section. There was this gerbil in a small display case with absolutely nothing else in the cage. He was sitting in the corner staring out. He looked at me. And my heart broke seeing him like that. I didn't buy him right then as I had already adopted a gerbil earlier that month. However, the image of him all alone in that empty cage stuck in my mind. The next day I called the pet store to see if they still had him. He was the only black gerbil I had seen in the shop. The person I spoke to at the pet shop said they didn't have any black gerbils.
I remembered that he wasn't labeled and I believe he was housed next to a hamster. I figured maybe they overlooked him as a hamster. I went in the following day and sure enough, there he was. Sitting in the same display case. At least this time he had a little house and a wheel, water, and food. I didn't hesitate this time and I adopted him right away.
I named him Sevi, after Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series. Severus, always dressed in all black. And Sevi resembled his namesake with his glossy black fur.
I'm not sure if he was sick when I got him. I would wake him up in the morning for breakfast and he would gladly get up and have his meal. He had built quite a network of tunnels, sometimes I would offer him food at multiple entrances to see which passage he preferred to use that day. If I would put something new in his cage he would always come over to inspect it and he seemed happy to play with whatever new toy I gave him. Sometimes when he would hear me open his cage he would come out to inspect the noise.
A month or so after I got him I noticed he started to slow down a bit. Only coming up to drink from his water bottle and for meals and the occasional "Hello, mommy!" He was not as active as my other gerbil, Marshmallow, and he stayed in his tunnels most of the time.
I'm not entirely sure of his actual age. Most sources say they are about six weeks old by the time they make it to the pet store. On a separate occasion, when I asked the store clerk how old the gerbils were, he said they were about a year old. It's quite possible he could have been older.
Sadly, Sevi passed away. Regarding his illness, I brought him to the emergency vet when I noticed he was acting funny. He was a bit lethargic and he would start shaking. The vet's guess was epilepsy and they were supposed to keep him overnight for observation. By the time I got home from the vet I received a call saying he had passed. The vet I spoke with on the phone said he suspected something more was wrong with Sevi but he didn't know what it was. But I will always love him, and treasure the time we did have together,
Talk about Sevi in Pet Talk!
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