Phoebe Lautrera (aka TDC's Phoebe Dani) is the daughter of my very first pair, Pookie (black) and Missy (argente golden). She's a very special "little girl" who recently celebrated her 2 year old birthday. She's special because she had litters right up until she was 2 year old, which is amazing for a gerbil! She didn't have her first litter until she was 17 months old which is something in itself. She and her mate, Ciaran, who was a lilac, had 8 litters, totalling 30 children. They also have many, many grandchildren. Both Phoebe and Ciaran have passed on now, unfortunately = ( But their legacy lives on with their children & grandchildren and perhaps some day great-grandchildren.

In Memory of Ciaran Lautrera
b. Summer 1997 - July 20th, 1998
Phoebe will love you always

Ciaran was an adorable little lilac boy that I got at the local pet store, Pet Village. I picked him up out of a tankful of his lilac siblings and let him run around on my arms. I instantly fell in love with him. We needed a male companion for our patriarch, Pookie, so I had convinced my mom to let me go and get him. I decided immediately that Ciaran was the one I wanted. Since I had picked him up first it wouldn't be fair to take a different one. Well, when we got home I was a bit nervous about starting the introduction process so I waited about a week. In that time (the week of Aug 14th, 1997), Rachel Dani, a beautiful black girl, was caught and killed by our cat during an escape. That left her cagemate, Phoebe, alone. Sooooo I convinced my mother to let me introduce Ciaran to Phoebe. After all, Phoebe was 14 mos old at the time, she probably couldn't have babies ;)

Their first litter consisted of five pups: Mystery (argente F), Grace (lilac F), Adia (argente F), Surfacing (lilac M) and Angel (lilac M). They were born November 4th, 1997. Phoebe was instantly a good mother, and Ciaran was a great father. Now Mystery is the mate of a siamese named Sherlock in NJ, Angel fathered 8 children with an argente cream named Sweet Pea in Oklahoma (he's no called "Shadow"), Surfacing had some 19 children with an agouti named Miss Piggy, and Adia was paired with Riven a grey agouti spot.

Shadow's (Angel) kids

Over time they had 8 litters. Total they had 30 children and countless grandkids. But one day I noticed a growth on Ciaran's side. It was unlikely it was a tumor, because of its location, so we decided it was a harmless cyst (an abscess was unlikely as he had not been injured). Perhaps it would have been fine but for the fact that Ciaran had a natural instinct to nibble at it, and there was little we could do to stop it. Eventually he had a rather nasty wound by his hip. We treated it every day with polysporin and put tetracyclene in his water to fight infection, but in the end it got infected anyway = ( Ciaran died of blood poisoning on July 20th, 1998, the day after I returned from a 5 day trip to Cincinnati, Ohio. We'll miss him = ( here is an animation of him running on his wheel I made ages ago.

I also have written a poem about him here.

After Ciaran's death Phoebe just wasn't herself. She wasn't as active, and I guess maybe she was losing a bit of weight. I attributed the weight loss to the fact that she wasn't pregnant, but I guess I was wrong. The day before her death she'd become uncommonly listless. She didn't even pay attention to rice krispies and didn't seem interested in a run on the bed. Worried she was very lonely, I introduced her quickly to Linnea so she wouldn't be alone. But I guess it was too late, because Phoebe died the next morning = ( Now I'm going to try to introduce Linnea to Phoebe's granddaughter, Gemedet, because I'm so attatched to the idea of keeping her.

Like I said, they had 8 litters. Here are the litters' pages:

Litter #1 11/4/97
Litter #2 12/14/97
Litter #3 1/9/98
Litter #4 2/14/98
Litter #5 3/13/98
Litter #6 4/18/98
Litter #7 5/14/98
Litter #8 6/21/98