July
2008
When Sam met Molly……and Matilda and Amelia.
Well I’ve spent the past couple of weeks slowly trying to introduce Sam the spiny to my three girls. For anyone that doesn’t know spinies aren’t like fancy mice at all and very few people have had any luck introducing them. Myself I’ve had mixed success, Amelia and Heidi to Molly and Matilda when they were all still young went without a hitch but then trying to add Grace in after we lost her friend Baby and Heidi from the girl group ended pretty grimly. However Hoggle to Grace was again completely straight forward so I figured I had a reasonable chance of another neutered boy to girls.
I started off introducing them in a carrier. At this stage everyone sniffed each other over and then all went to sleep snuggled up together! With fancy mice of course this would be fantastic but unfortunately it proved not to be much of an indicator at all in this case. After a completely calm day together in the carrier I moved them all into a bare duna that none of them had ever been in before. Almost immediately Amelia starting chasing Sam about and got worked up enough for me to remove her for a bit. Matilda then took over. 
After removing Tilly though Sam settled down with Molly and went to sleep so that was how we spent our first night.
Over the next week or so things followed that pattern, all four spent their evenings together, albeit it with some chasing, but I removed Amelia and Tilly over night. The chasing seemed to lessen as the days went on and after a week I felt happy enough to leave them together overnight. The next morning I found the girls sleeping in one corner and Sam on his own in another but everyone looked fine so I thought we were making progress. It was three days after that, when I hadn’t seen any chasing for some time and everything appeared settled that I found bite marks on Sam for the first time and realised it just wasn’t going to work. 
My original plan was to kit out my empty savic freddy cage for the four of them so lucky Sam and Molly now have all that space for just the two of them. They are spending all their time together, sharing a bed and Sammy has finally come out of his shell and has been bouncing around gummi bear style like happy spinys do lol! Bless him he had me quite worried when he was alone and looking back was obviously not happy during the intro stage so I’m sure now that I’ve made the right decision, even if it is a bit of shame that Molly is no longer with the other girls. Still no one is alone and everyone is happy and healthy which is the main thing. 
This does leave me looking for a new cage for Amelia and Tilly though as the 3ft tank the girls used to occupy now belongs to Hoggle and Grace who had been waiting to move out of my smaller tank for far too long, love em. They are really enjoying the extra space so if I can pick up another 2nd hand freddy anywhere I shall have three pairs of thoroughly spoilt spinies!!!
In other news the long stay lodgers have returned, well for a week anyway. Their owner is away on holiday so I get to fuss over my little friends Mercury, Rapid and Delta as well as the newer members to the girly group, Panama, Morocco and Mongolia. 
On a less positive note though my little runty boy Bobble is unwell with horribly noisy breathing. He’s on a good antibiotic and I have him on his own for a bit to try and feed him up. The trouble is he has always been a teeny little thing and is pretty frail looking when he’s healthy so I am very worried about him, I just don’t know if he has the strength to cope with being ill. He is eating well and is an active little scrap but tbh I think he’s basically been living on borrowed time his whole life. Wish us luck.
