Our dear friend Andy (a person) moved to Basel, Switzerland back in July, and he has been greatly missed in Warsaw. Andy's a great guy, and he's been a wonderful friend over the years. But now that I think about it, he's already left us a few times (to move to SF, to go on a long backpacking trip, to Run Wisla), so blah blah blah, Same Same But Different. Ok, stop it, this post is not about Andy and how we're sad without him. The point is that for his last couple weeks in Warsaw, he stayed in my apartment with me. It's always nice to have guests over...there's some comfort in the sounds of other living creatures in the house (that is, if you know who those other living creatures are). So when he left for Basel, we tried our best to immediately replace him.
On the 1st of July, we attended a 4th of July party with a bunch of friends. A couple of them, Martins and Anna, had a pet "mouse" (at home, not at the party), for which they were looking for a new home. They asked Zosia if she'd be willing to take him in, and of course Zosia's eyes lit up like someone just gave her a giant chocolate bar. She dreams about a day when we have a dog together, which I also want, especially if they invent dogs that don't shed, smell like fresh laundry, and can pee in the toilet. After several games of flip cup, she asked me if we could have a mouse. I don't remember saying yes (see previous sentence about playing several games of flip cup), but I guess I did. I honestly thought it was some strange dream. She asked me again the next morning, and again without thinking what it really meant, I confirmed my previous response. Little did I expect, later that day, we had a mouse.
It turns out it's not a mouse, but a "degu", or koszatniczka in Polish. Martins had bought it for his daughter about 8 years ago, and now that she's a teenager, apparently there are more important things to do than take care of a rodent. They also planned on getting a second cat, and it was a massacre waiting to happen. So, that Sunday we said goodbye to Andy (the person), filmed a short scene with our friends for an episode of Househunters, International (yea, I had to throw that in there), and picked up the degu.
Apparently they didn't know for sure if it was a boy or a girl, but they'd been calling it Jenny for the past several years. Since we missed Andy a lot already, we decided to change the name to Andy, and just pretend he was a boy. One Andy out, one Andy in.
He's actually really sweet, as long as you get past the fact that if you saw him in real life, you'd jump on the table and complain to the landlord. After a few days getting comfortable, he decided that he didn't need to run away from us when we let him out of the cage. At first he didn't seem to like to be picked up, but since Zosia started grabbing him the minute she sees him, he has learned to live with it. We were hoping that he'd like to jump on our shoulders and sit there like a parrot, but when we picked him up from Martins (actually it was a "her" at the time we picked her up), she climbed on his shoulder and peed. So that idea kind of faded away. Plus, he seems kinda fearless (or dumb) and sometimes jumps from high places...so we don't trust him enough to let him crawl around high places on his own.
He lives in a 3-level cage, with a running wheel, a shelter and hammock, lots of hay and shoe box full of sand to bathe in. Martins gave us all the food and supplies that they had...a true "starters kit" for a degu owner. We learned that degus usually live 8-10 years max...which is a bit sad considering he is already 8. But let's not think about that right now. He likes to eat treats out of our hands, and hides peanuts around the kitchen in plain sight. He thinks he's being sneaky, but if you look around when you visit, you're bound to see them around the apartment; in the corner between walls, near the edge of a rug, or on a shoe.
Zosia is now a bit more aggressive in trying to get Andy to play with her. Watching her take off the top of the cage, tipping the running wheel over trying to get him out, begging out loud "please come and play with me"....it gives me images of an 6 year old trying to get her hamster out to play with her, not understanding why the animal doesn't respond to the harassment. When asked, Zosia admitted that she indeed had a hamster when she was a kid and treated it in this exact same way.
So even though Andy (the human) has been gone a few months, it's like he never left. Besides having the same name, here are some other similarities between Andy the degu and Andy the person:
- They are both hairy
- Girls think they are cute
- They both recycle (Degu reuses his food crumbs as a bed)
- They can both fit in your pocket - and they both don't like to be put in there
- They both squeak and make cute noises
- They are both vegan
- They both like to run
- Degus come from Chile and Andy has been to Chile
- They both sleep close to where they poop
Just to make sure that they aren't actually the same person, I identified a couple differences:
- Andy was never called Jenny as a kid (though his mom's name is Jenny, which is a strange coincidence)
- I don't think Andy has ever peed on Martins
- That's probably all of the differences
Some of you know that Andy (the degu) got a bit sick back in October. It wasn't really an illness, but he lost a lot of weight and wasn't eating. It turned out to be the best possible type of illness, in that it could be fixed. All the signs pointed to ingrown teeth (getting skinny, dropping food when trying to eat, rubbing his mouth with his hands, and making "tsk" noises with his teeth). I read about it online and it looks like teeth overgrowing and digging into gums is a common issue. It makes eating painful, so he lost nearly half of his body weight (from 200ish grams to 110 at his lowest).
I had been away for a week and Zosia was coming over to feed him every couple days (which is normally OK), but when I got back he was noticeably skinnier. It took some time away to notice is....since we had seen him every day before that, we didn't notice that he was losing a couple grams each day. He was still active and friendly, but something was wrong. He was also always cold, sitting next to the heater pipes or even crawling on our feet, rather than sitting on the floor. When he was in his cage, he was always buried under the blankets.
Turns out he was cold because he didn't have any fat on his body. We had to search for an "exotic" vet, but finding a vet from Bali or Sri Lanka in Warsaw is not easy. What? Oh, that's not what an exotic vet is. But still, vets that deal with exotic animals isn't so easy. The first vet we found didn't seem confident that she could fix the problem, even though she recognized the problem right away. Andy's back teeth were the biggest problem, but she said she couldn't grind them down because Andy was too weak for anesthesia. This meant she thought Andy needed anesthesia, which scared us. So she cut the front teeth only, which didn't require any, and sent us home. We needed to come back after he gained some weight.
That first night we brought Andy home from the vet, I honestly thought it was the end. He was in shock from the shaving of his front teeth, weak, and couldn't even put his legs under himself when we put him in his "hospital" box (we made a small nest for him with a heating pad in a cardboard box to make it easier to monitor him). His eyes were half open and he looked like a rag doll. It was hard not to cry and want to try anything possible to make him better. Poor little guy crawled under Zosia's shirt and slept there for hours. The image of Zosia laying on the bed, whispering her love to Andy (the degu, not the person!), and Andy trying to squeeze as close to her as possible to absorb her warmth was heartbreaking. But it also reminded me that I am a lucky man to be marrying such a caring soul.
Around midnight, we were laying on the bed, falling asleep, and Andy started crawling around. We immediately jumped up, excited for a sign of life, and tried to feed him. We tried everything we could think of, but remembered that we couldn't give him sugar. Peanuts are supposed to be a rare treat, but we knew he loved them, so we tried. They were too hard. He finally managed a bit of food until he was too weak to continue and went back to sleep. I was cautiously optimistic, but still tried to brace myself for Andy not being with us the next morning.
We were so happy to see him moving around more the next morning. Over the next couple days we tried everything we could think of: puffed rice, soft oats, bread soaked in water...I even baked some "degu cookies" which I saw online. We didn't leave his sight for a couple days. Then we realized that we should use the syringe to feed him, which we had been using to give him medicine. Looking back, I don't know why we didn't think of this earlier.
Upon hearing the news of Andy's struggles, friends came over to see him. It was really sweet. He is "just" a rodent, but in a few months already became part of the family.
He was getting a little better, but we weren't convinced. So we took him a few times to see a different vet we read about on the internet. It required us leaving work early and taking two buses to get there, but he turned out to be very capable and helpful. We got to see with our own eyes the procedures he was doing, so it made us feel better that we understood the problems and the solutions. Though it wasn't always pretty. He promptly used a metal contraption to lock Andy's mouth in an open position (which Andy hated and it was hard to watch), and shaved down his back teeth. The first vet always took Andy to the back room so we actually never saw what she did to him. Maybe this was for our own benefit, but it made it hard to understand what was going on. The second vet also confirmed that YES, Andy was in fact a boy!
We weighed him every day to check his progress, and each morning started with us crossing our fingers as we put him on the kitchen scale (which we bought specifically to weigh him), hoping for 1 or 2 grams more than the previous day. We had to feed him every few hours, about 5 times per day. This meant we had to go home every day during lunch (also to change the heating pad to keep him warm in the cage), and meet at home immediately after work, even if we had other plans. We are also grateful to our friends who helped Zosia when I was out of town for work. It was a true team effort, but it was never a chore. Maybe that's what parenting is about.
At first he struggled to eat 6 ml of food from the syringe, but eventually, he was eating over 20 ml for each meal. We had fun making different food smoothies for him in the Nutri Bullet (broccoli, peanut butter, degu food, seeds, etc) and shopping for low sugar baby food. As he got stronger, he looked forward more and more to his feasts. He went crazy over the parsnip mix. We were starting to think he was better, but he didn't want to admit it, so he could continue with this royal treatment.
Over the next couple months, we grew closer with Andy, and the best part is that Zosia finally moved in to my apartment! At first it was due to necessity, so we could feed him together in the morning (it was impossible to feed him without 3 hands). But now she can't go more than an hour without kissing and hugging him. In the middle of dinner or exercising in the living room, she'll just stand up, walk to the cage to grab him (I can hear Andy squeak "not again?!") and walk around with him wrapped snugly in her hands, pulled up to her nose, completely forgetting about what she was doing before.
Andy is now more like a dog than any other pet. When we let him out of the cage once in a while, he follows us around like a puppy. We don't let him go in some of the rooms, but when we open the doors to go in or out, he's always right behind trying to sneak in. He especially likes to sneak into the bathroom to hide behind the washing machine. He likes to sit on our laps, even crawling up my leg at the dinner table to get close to me (or probably closer to the food, but let's just pretend). Currently his favorite thing is when Zosia lays Andy (the degu) face up on her chest and scratches his stomach. He likes eskimo kisses and nibbles our fingers as if to groom us.
One thing that the doctor mentioned is that Andy needs friends. I read some forums and joined some Facebook groups to see what people say about degus, and everyone says that they shouldn't be alone. This might explain why Andy is so interactive with us. The forums were also good to learn what else to be careful about (no sugar diets, monitoring his drinking to identify signs of diabetes, and generally that we should weigh him every week or month to see any changes).
So, of course, we decided to get two more Andys, I mean degus. We're supposed to get them very soon, so stay tuned and we'll let you know how that goes!
This is Andy, the human
On the 1st of July, we attended a 4th of July party with a bunch of friends. A couple of them, Martins and Anna, had a pet "mouse" (at home, not at the party), for which they were looking for a new home. They asked Zosia if she'd be willing to take him in, and of course Zosia's eyes lit up like someone just gave her a giant chocolate bar. She dreams about a day when we have a dog together, which I also want, especially if they invent dogs that don't shed, smell like fresh laundry, and can pee in the toilet. After several games of flip cup, she asked me if we could have a mouse. I don't remember saying yes (see previous sentence about playing several games of flip cup), but I guess I did. I honestly thought it was some strange dream. She asked me again the next morning, and again without thinking what it really meant, I confirmed my previous response. Little did I expect, later that day, we had a mouse.
It turns out it's not a mouse, but a "degu", or koszatniczka in Polish. Martins had bought it for his daughter about 8 years ago, and now that she's a teenager, apparently there are more important things to do than take care of a rodent. They also planned on getting a second cat, and it was a massacre waiting to happen. So, that Sunday we said goodbye to Andy (the person), filmed a short scene with our friends for an episode of Househunters, International (yea, I had to throw that in there), and picked up the degu.
But first, let's become famous
He already knows how to write his name
He's actually really sweet, as long as you get past the fact that if you saw him in real life, you'd jump on the table and complain to the landlord. After a few days getting comfortable, he decided that he didn't need to run away from us when we let him out of the cage. At first he didn't seem to like to be picked up, but since Zosia started grabbing him the minute she sees him, he has learned to live with it. We were hoping that he'd like to jump on our shoulders and sit there like a parrot, but when we picked him up from Martins (actually it was a "her" at the time we picked her up), she climbed on his shoulder and peed. So that idea kind of faded away. Plus, he seems kinda fearless (or dumb) and sometimes jumps from high places...so we don't trust him enough to let him crawl around high places on his own.
It took a while for him to want to come out and play with us
Don't jump (or pee)!
He lives in a 3-level cage, with a running wheel, a shelter and hammock, lots of hay and shoe box full of sand to bathe in. Martins gave us all the food and supplies that they had...a true "starters kit" for a degu owner. We learned that degus usually live 8-10 years max...which is a bit sad considering he is already 8. But let's not think about that right now. He likes to eat treats out of our hands, and hides peanuts around the kitchen in plain sight. He thinks he's being sneaky, but if you look around when you visit, you're bound to see them around the apartment; in the corner between walls, near the edge of a rug, or on a shoe.
Zosia is now a bit more aggressive in trying to get Andy to play with her. Watching her take off the top of the cage, tipping the running wheel over trying to get him out, begging out loud "please come and play with me"....it gives me images of an 6 year old trying to get her hamster out to play with her, not understanding why the animal doesn't respond to the harassment. When asked, Zosia admitted that she indeed had a hamster when she was a kid and treated it in this exact same way.
Andy and his mom
Playing games on iPad together
So even though Andy (the human) has been gone a few months, it's like he never left. Besides having the same name, here are some other similarities between Andy the degu and Andy the person:
- They are both hairy
- Girls think they are cute
- They both recycle (Degu reuses his food crumbs as a bed)
- They can both fit in your pocket - and they both don't like to be put in there
- They both squeak and make cute noises
- They are both vegan
- They both like to run
- Degus come from Chile and Andy has been to Chile
- They both sleep close to where they poop
Just to make sure that they aren't actually the same person, I identified a couple differences:
- Andy was never called Jenny as a kid (though his mom's name is Jenny, which is a strange coincidence)
- I don't think Andy has ever peed on Martins
- That's probably all of the differences
They're not the same person
Nothing could stop Andy's visit to the pumpkin patch
I had been away for a week and Zosia was coming over to feed him every couple days (which is normally OK), but when I got back he was noticeably skinnier. It took some time away to notice is....since we had seen him every day before that, we didn't notice that he was losing a couple grams each day. He was still active and friendly, but something was wrong. He was also always cold, sitting next to the heater pipes or even crawling on our feet, rather than sitting on the floor. When he was in his cage, he was always buried under the blankets.
Sitting on the heater pipe is one way to warm up...
This is another way
Turns out he was cold because he didn't have any fat on his body. We had to search for an "exotic" vet, but finding a vet from Bali or Sri Lanka in Warsaw is not easy. What? Oh, that's not what an exotic vet is. But still, vets that deal with exotic animals isn't so easy. The first vet we found didn't seem confident that she could fix the problem, even though she recognized the problem right away. Andy's back teeth were the biggest problem, but she said she couldn't grind them down because Andy was too weak for anesthesia. This meant she thought Andy needed anesthesia, which scared us. So she cut the front teeth only, which didn't require any, and sent us home. We needed to come back after he gained some weight.
That first night we brought Andy home from the vet, I honestly thought it was the end. He was in shock from the shaving of his front teeth, weak, and couldn't even put his legs under himself when we put him in his "hospital" box (we made a small nest for him with a heating pad in a cardboard box to make it easier to monitor him). His eyes were half open and he looked like a rag doll. It was hard not to cry and want to try anything possible to make him better. Poor little guy crawled under Zosia's shirt and slept there for hours. The image of Zosia laying on the bed, whispering her love to Andy (the degu, not the person!), and Andy trying to squeeze as close to her as possible to absorb her warmth was heartbreaking. But it also reminded me that I am a lucky man to be marrying such a caring soul.
So much love...
Around midnight, we were laying on the bed, falling asleep, and Andy started crawling around. We immediately jumped up, excited for a sign of life, and tried to feed him. We tried everything we could think of, but remembered that we couldn't give him sugar. Peanuts are supposed to be a rare treat, but we knew he loved them, so we tried. They were too hard. He finally managed a bit of food until he was too weak to continue and went back to sleep. I was cautiously optimistic, but still tried to brace myself for Andy not being with us the next morning.
We were so happy to see him moving around more the next morning. Over the next couple days we tried everything we could think of: puffed rice, soft oats, bread soaked in water...I even baked some "degu cookies" which I saw online. We didn't leave his sight for a couple days. Then we realized that we should use the syringe to feed him, which we had been using to give him medicine. Looking back, I don't know why we didn't think of this earlier.
He fell in love with this syringe
Upon hearing the news of Andy's struggles, friends came over to see him. It was really sweet. He is "just" a rodent, but in a few months already became part of the family.
He was getting a little better, but we weren't convinced. So we took him a few times to see a different vet we read about on the internet. It required us leaving work early and taking two buses to get there, but he turned out to be very capable and helpful. We got to see with our own eyes the procedures he was doing, so it made us feel better that we understood the problems and the solutions. Though it wasn't always pretty. He promptly used a metal contraption to lock Andy's mouth in an open position (which Andy hated and it was hard to watch), and shaved down his back teeth. The first vet always took Andy to the back room so we actually never saw what she did to him. Maybe this was for our own benefit, but it made it hard to understand what was going on. The second vet also confirmed that YES, Andy was in fact a boy!
We weighed him every day to check his progress, and each morning started with us crossing our fingers as we put him on the kitchen scale (which we bought specifically to weigh him), hoping for 1 or 2 grams more than the previous day. We had to feed him every few hours, about 5 times per day. This meant we had to go home every day during lunch (also to change the heating pad to keep him warm in the cage), and meet at home immediately after work, even if we had other plans. We are also grateful to our friends who helped Zosia when I was out of town for work. It was a true team effort, but it was never a chore. Maybe that's what parenting is about.
At first he struggled to eat 6 ml of food from the syringe, but eventually, he was eating over 20 ml for each meal. We had fun making different food smoothies for him in the Nutri Bullet (broccoli, peanut butter, degu food, seeds, etc) and shopping for low sugar baby food. As he got stronger, he looked forward more and more to his feasts. He went crazy over the parsnip mix. We were starting to think he was better, but he didn't want to admit it, so he could continue with this royal treatment.
Chillin' out with peanut butter on a spoon, just like my mom used to do
Over the next couple months, we grew closer with Andy, and the best part is that Zosia finally moved in to my apartment! At first it was due to necessity, so we could feed him together in the morning (it was impossible to feed him without 3 hands). But now she can't go more than an hour without kissing and hugging him. In the middle of dinner or exercising in the living room, she'll just stand up, walk to the cage to grab him (I can hear Andy squeak "not again?!") and walk around with him wrapped snugly in her hands, pulled up to her nose, completely forgetting about what she was doing before.
Even Zosia's brother has mastered the "Smash your nose into Andy" pose
Andy is now more like a dog than any other pet. When we let him out of the cage once in a while, he follows us around like a puppy. We don't let him go in some of the rooms, but when we open the doors to go in or out, he's always right behind trying to sneak in. He especially likes to sneak into the bathroom to hide behind the washing machine. He likes to sit on our laps, even crawling up my leg at the dinner table to get close to me (or probably closer to the food, but let's just pretend). Currently his favorite thing is when Zosia lays Andy (the degu) face up on her chest and scratches his stomach. He likes eskimo kisses and nibbles our fingers as if to groom us.
Andy Claus is back to normal!
One thing that the doctor mentioned is that Andy needs friends. I read some forums and joined some Facebook groups to see what people say about degus, and everyone says that they shouldn't be alone. This might explain why Andy is so interactive with us. The forums were also good to learn what else to be careful about (no sugar diets, monitoring his drinking to identify signs of diabetes, and generally that we should weigh him every week or month to see any changes).
So, of course, we decided to get two more Andys, I mean degus. We're supposed to get them very soon, so stay tuned and we'll let you know how that goes!
Party of 3, soon to be Party of 5?
