Degu tragedy

2-year-old Sammy with one of his birthday presents, a degu named Yami.

We have only 1 degu (pronounced day-goo) left. Yesterday Dominic went to check on them, and 2 had died but 1 escaped from his cage and lived. It was a sad day for all of us. Samuel has decided to name this last degu Yugi. I hope he survives.


History: When Sammy turned 2, we gave him 2 degus (they were mostly for Dominic). At the time Dominic and Sammy were big into Yu-gi-oh!, both the cartoon (Sammy) and trading card game (Dominic), so they named the brothers Yami and Kuriboh.

About 9 months later Kuriboh died. Degus are very social and can die of loneliness. However, if you pair two males that were not litter mates, then they'll fight to death. So we bought a female degu and named her Taia, to keep with the yugioh theme. In due time there were 7 babies. 3 weeks later Taia got sick and died. We were actually grateful, because she was a bit crazy and half wild. Unfortunately, it was too soon for the babies to be weaned, and we worried for them. Yami was a great Dad, and all the babies survived. We didn't name the babies, because they all looked exactly the same.

During the adolescent stage we separated the 3 girls from the boys. 2 of the boys kept fighting (teenage rage?), and one of them died from his injuries. So now we had 7 degus in 2 cages. The situation remained unchanged for a year and a half until we moved.

Since we didn't know what we were moving into, we decided to give up some of our pets. PetCo has an adoption program, so we dropped off the girl degus and hoped they got adopted. Honestly we weren't too concerned, because all the employees were delighted with them.

These last 4 degus had to endure a week in our moving van in November until we found a house and moved in. They seemed to do just fine for several months. Until one of them decided to get out. We had several adventures and misadventures due to the one we dubbed Houdini. His brothers and dad followed suit. The amazing thing was that the cat never ate them! She actually seemed to get along with the occasionally free-roaming rodents.

We successfully sealed all escape routes. A few weeks ago Houdini chewed a new hole in the cage, escaped, and never returned. The others stayed put. And then yesterday Dominic found the tragic scene, with the 1 degu still alive. We really do not want more degu babies, so we're trying it with just one and hope he will be ok. The saddest part was when Dominic explained the situation to Samuel, who said, "But they were my birthday presents."