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Here is Phoenix, one of our two brothers. He is almost three years old now, we got him the day I was going for an interview for my  degree :P When he was younger, he was always the more adventurous of the two and often did the dirty work for his  brother...just the dumb big one :D

Phoenix and his brother Monaco often used to escape, one time in particular it was during the  night, I was woken up by him running across my face. During his escape he'd decided to climb up onto the bed, and then run  across my head... how many animals would do that?
 Now he's older, Phoenix is a lot quieter, and it's easier to hold him now than it was when he was a little kid.
 His favourite hobbies are, chewing plastic, cardboard, eating sunflower seeds... and a lot of them!

The next set of images were taken when Phoenix was around 1yr 10months

The following images were taken in February 2004, one under natural sunlight. It is very difficult to get good photos of a black gerbil using a flash, never mind natural light. I think the camera literally thinks that there is nothing there... it is just a blackness, like a hole or something...

April

Using two zooms combeined together to try to get a closer image.

November 2004

The boys are getting pretty old now, they're coming up to three years old around April. Wooo they are doing very well, if a bit fat, but they are oldies bless them.

They were moved out of their large bachelor pad and into a Duna to allow room for the 6 girls. It's nice because we now see them more and can pick them up much more easily than we could before as they had way too many tunnels and often we'd have to demolish it to get them... Or bribe them with food ;)

So here is Phoenix as he looks at the end of November 2004 (basically December, have Christmas MP3's on!)

February 2005

As Phoenix is now becoming an old man, I thought that perhaps I should take the chance to take photos of him better, should he sadly die suddenly - He's 3 years old in a few weeks or so!

If only I had known about showing Gerbils when I first got him, he apparently is a very good quality black. All the self colours are prone to having faults - this is where they often have a white bib going down their throat, sometimes as far down as their belly and white on their paws. Our Nutmegs and Saffrons also suffer from these faults because they too are self colours, this means they have a solid colour, no white belly like that of the wild, Golden Agouti colour.

I have considered showing Phoenix, but as he's an old man I'd hate for the stress to be too much for him - although he is looking extremely well for such an old Gerbil, so perhaps he would be fine travelling to a show?? I would only show him at sheffield, so it wouldn't be a very long journey.

Well, onto the photos!

Above you can clearly see that there is little, or no white on his left front paw.

A front shot, showing his general body condition... If a little on the chubby side!

This time, showing his right front paw with little to no white.

Showing that he has no bib, natural light so can get a true feel to his colour. He does have white on his top lip though, which may loose points - I'm not sure though!

This time showing the white on his top lip and no bib from the bottom of the mouth down the neck. This is taken under flash and so causes the white to be more noticable.

 

And now for some normal photos of Phoenix, we'd just cleaned out their tank and so were busy running around checking out their home.