Stacy – our family Syrian hamster – is now four months old. She’s also grown noticeably larger from about 8cm when we first got her, to 13cm long from snout to her stump tail. From what we’ve read, this is supposed to be nearly about her maximum size already, but I reckon we didn’t expect her to grow up quite so fast!
Though she’s comfortable with either Ling or myself holding her, she’s still quite shy socially and can be easily startled by movements around the house. She’s otherwise pretty fearless, and spends a good amount of time every night climbing the bars of the cage. On several occasions, we’ve seen her hanging precariously at the top of her cage with just one paw. Occasionally, she’ll be able to swing herself up so that her feet can grip the cage bars. More often than not though, she’ll fall right down, dust herself off, and try again LOL.
One habit we’re trying to break of her though is her chewing of cage bars. And that’s despite her cage having about six different types of materials she can chew – apple sticks, mineral chews, ropes, wood blocks, dog biscuits, and even toilet rolls. It got so bad that she chewed through the coating of the cage bars, and we had to physically fastened chew sticks there to block her from getting near the cage bars.
Stacy is poised to be a gymnast when she gets older.
Do you have to keep the air conditioner on full-time in the room she resides in?
Unfortunately not, bud. Stacy’s cage is in our master room as it’s normally cooler than the other bedrooms during day time even without air-conditioning.
Ah, that’s good! I didn’t know exactly how that would work.
We’ve been down to one sugar glider for nearly two years now, but the remaining little critter is steadfast and as active as ever. He’ll be ten years old next year!
Wow that’s long for a house-pet! One thing we’ll have to wrestle with is that Syrians live for just 2-3 years. At some point we’re going to have to deal with the two kids’ reactions to pet deaths.:(