That is a blue dilute gerbil, carrying the gene 'd'. It has been available in Europe for many years but no blue gerbils were present in North America. Until now!
Hatching the Plan
Tracy and Sami K., AGS members from Cambridge, MA, went home to visit family in Finland in May, 2008. While there, they visited a gerbil show and met some blues in person. They were captivated by their beautiful rich color and brought home many pictures.
Here in the US, Steve of Shawsheen River Gerbils starting thinking. What would be involved in importing some blue gerbils? Tracy put out some feelers, and soon Steve was in touch with Sirkku Alanne of Aavehaltian in Finland. Sirkku was prepared to work with us provided the animals could be transported in the passenger compartment and not shipped. To our surprise, our first phone call informed us that Finn Air would allow the transport of small animals in the passenger compartment, provided they fit under the seat. The plan was set in motion.
Blue Gerbils, Red Tape
Steve knew that the tricky part would be getting all the ducks in a row - in this case, the "ducks" being all the US agencies that had a stake in this or who thought they might. We had joked for years that if there was ever a man to do the job of importing blues to the US, it is Steve: his ability to locate regulations and laws on the Internet, not to mention read and understand them, is unparalleled.
Steve learned quickly that the regulatory difficulty would come from the fact that gerbils fall into a gray area - pets, but not common pets like dogs or cats, for which the rules are clear; and rodents, but not laboratory rodents. This ambiguity helped - when various agency officials shrugged their shoulders and said "no rules apply" - but also added complexity. For instance, Steve ended up having a whole go-round with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) who thought that the gerbils were not importable. Eventually, a very helpful staffer at the US Dept. of Agriculture, backed by the US vets in Baltimore, persuaded the CDC to uninvolve itself.
The US Fish and Wildlife Dept. ended up being the body who took it upon themselves to oversee the importation. Their normal procedure would be to have an inspector look over the animals and paperwork at the airport before allowing them into the country. However, since Steve was travelling to and from Finland on the Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, the inspection office would be closed. This meant that they would have to offer the inspectors at JFK airport an option to take an overtime slot to perform a Sunday inspection. If no one chose to work the overtime, USDF&W would issue a conditional release to Steve which he must pick up on Friday in person. When would he know if he needed to be in New York on Friday? That Friday morning.
In the meantime, we prepared ourselves. Steve scrutinized the airplane map and chose a seat which would give him the maximum under-seat space according to FinnAir specifications. We researched shipping boxes on the Internet. After some study, we settled on the carrier pictured above. I called to ask specifically about whether the box would be chew-proof for gerbils. The very helpful customer service agent assured me the box had sturdily carried mice and rats all over the world. "Yes," I insisted, "But these are gerbils! Do you know how they chew?"
The boxes arrived (two, so that I could experiment with one) and we plastered them with all the many required stickers and tags. They did seem pretty sturdy and spacious: bigger than a medium critter keeper, although with a low ceiling. The 3 oz. gel restriction meant we could not use the all-purpose food-water substrate sold with the boxes. Instead, we strategized with the gerbils' breeder, Sirkku, about every aspect of their care on route: bedding, food and water, and what we could legally import on each side... US gerbil food, Finnish gerbil food, US apples, Finnish apples... I kept staring at the boxes, wondering whether they could securely keep five gerbils in two clans safe from each other for a 10 hour trip. Finally, I decided to give the boxes a trial run.
Best Supporting Actor
Every good story has a few bit players, and this is no exception. Enter Aace, pictured right. Aace came to us back in September, a renegade gerbil who'd so frightened his previous owner with his vicious biting that she could no longer care for him. I confess I was somewhat intrigued by the thought of a vicious gerbil, and I am always hopeful, so I took him. Our first few days together starting promisingly. But after a failed introduction and attempt at socialization by a volunteer, Aace showed his true colors: he is indeed an extremely fearful animal who will bite viciously if startled. He's also one of those restless, high-energy types. If I needed to test whether an extremely driven gerbil could chew his way out of an enclosure, Aace was the boy to prove it.
With some trepidation, I loaded Aace into one side of the box and a hearty mature female pair into the other (figuring that at least they could defend themselves if Aace got to them before I could). With bedding, food, a tube and a wad of toilet paper, they were set to simulate a plane trip - while sitting on my office floor.
It was hard to concentrate on my work; I was watching the shipping crate. First, there were sounds of happy tube chewing on both sides. After a few minutes, the girls did a bit more scuffling, then some digging, then settled down. Aace was restless. While neither party seemed to notice the others, there was plenty of sterotypical digging and banging about on Aace's side. Suddenly, I heard a new chewing sound: Aace had found the low edge of the lid, where it made a depression for easily opening the viewing hatch. Like a gerbil Harry Houdini, bent half backwards Aace proceeded to work on this edge. In ten minutes had chewed a slot large enough to slip a dime into. Disaster! There would be blue gerbils running all over the floor of a FinnAir flight! I quickly removed the girls, then went in to get Aace. Aace sensed my uncertainty and finished up his demonstration by piercing the pad of my right hand with his teeth. As I pried his jaw open, he turned and bit my left thumb for good measure. It looked like someone had stuck a knitting needle through my hand (although it healed up faster than I'd expected). Time for a remedial solution!
Reinforcements
Steve was travelling on business the week of my unsuccessful experiment with Aace, but upon his return, we took matters in hand. The next weekend became Operation Shipping Container. Phone calls were made; multiple hardware and feed stores were visited. Armed with a large roll of hardware cloth, some new tools, and a hand-drawn blueprint, Steve and Caroline spent most of the weekend snipping, clipping and filing smooth two perfectly-sized hardware mesh boxes to fit inside the two halves of the container. Their hands were literally blistered with the effort of filing down every rough edge to satisfy IATA requirements and the purportedly finicky EU inspectors. Closing the boxes posed a challenge; we settled on tiny jewelry findings to lace the fine sides of the cage together. The boxes were a delicate work of art but (we hoped) strong enough to hold a gerbil for one 10 hour flight. The second test (with different gerbils) was a success. On the last weekend before Thanksgiving, the shipping box problem was solved.
Start Your Engines
As we rolled into Thanksgiving week, Steve stayed in contact with USF&W, following up by email and fax any question they had, and pressuring them with his signature style of polite inevitability to follow up on their own process. On Wednesday, USF&W gave in. Mollified by Steve's unflappable organizational precision and unable to rustle up a weekend inspector, they faxed him a Waiver of Inspection on Wednesday, removing the pressure valve of a last-minute Friday drive to New York. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving turkey and turned in early Friday for Steve's big day.
While FinnAir was fine with the idea of gerbils in the cabin, there were no domestic US airlines that shared their sanguine view. And since Boston was not a valid port for importing animals, Steve had to drive from Boston to JFK Airport in New York so that the gerbils had a direct flight. Saturday traffic on Thanksgiving weekend is not usually a big problem, and the weather was clear and sunny. We packed his car with care: all the precious paperwork, waivers, and correspondence from agencies; in the trunk sat two clean 10-gallon tanks, with fresh aspen bedding, shredded kleenex, wheels, wooden huts, and water bottles - a comfortable place for our two new clans to stretch their legs and snuggle up for naps after their long flight. Steve hopped in his car and took off. We checked in by phone several times during the day. (While Steve was heading to JFK, I was driving the first of what would be many long drives associated with the giant Grafton rescue.)
There and Back
Steve routinely travels the world on business: this is the only explanation I can offer to those who question why anyone would fly ten hours from New York to Helsinki, spend four hours in the airport, and fly ten hours back home. That and, "he loves his wife." Lucky me.
But that's just what Steve did. And on her end, Sirkku recruited a friend to drive two and one half hours through a freezing Finnish November morning to meet a strange American at the airport, toting two kritter keepers with five gerbils. Sirkku had carefully introduced Hippu and Harriet, a handsome blue pair, a couple of weeks earlier. (US regulations require that animals not travel pregnant; we figured this way Harriet would be no more than a little bit pregnant. Turns out, Harriet's a stickler for details too - she wasn't.) The other members of the party were three lovely sisters, two blue and one dilute lilac. These would be the entire US blue breeding stock.
As she'd promised, Sirkku brought Finnish apples and Finnish seed; Steve had a US apple and US seeds; between them, they decided what would slip most easily through customs and loaded the gerbils into the carrier, carefully snapping shut the tiny jewelry findings. They chatted and socialized a bit, and before long, Steve and the gerbils re-boarded the same FinnAir jet he had come on, and headed back to New York with his prize.
VIP Treatment
While checking in for his departing flight in New York, Steve's unusually marked carry on - the green-lidded box labeled "5 gerbils - not venemous" caught the eye of the airline clerk, Louis, who inquired about the strange item. When Steve explained his quest, Louis was intrigued and promised to meet Steve's return flight to see the gerbil booty for himself. Louis was as good as his word. When Steve disembarked, Louis was waiting. Flashing his FinnAir ID, he whisked Steve and his furry companions through the VIP line, beelining through immigration to the desk at Customs.
The US Customs officer had been left the sole responsibility of defending the US against any improper importation of dangerous blue gerbils. "I have to see that they are alive," he proclaimed. Steve popped open the lids. Inside, five small blue and lilac heads peered up through the hardware mesh as Steve, Louis and the customs officer peered in. "Cute," Louis proclaimed. "They're alive," the officer proclaimed, satisfied. He looked over Steve's papers, added a few official markings, and Steve, Harriet, Hippu, Nova, Gabby and Vera headed out of JFK airport, free and clear.
Home Again, Home Again
What was a simple four-hour drive in sunny weather on Saturday was going to be anything but that on Sunday. It was after dark, and rain was pouring down on Steve and the other million or so East Coasters trying to return home from Grandma's with the kids and the leftover turkey tucked into the back seat. Approaching nearly 24 hours in transit, Steve called me from somewhere north of New York, saying that conditions were bad and he had had enough for the day. With no GPS, I became his human one: as Steve described his location, I gradually honed in on him with Google maps; while he drove, I began researching pet-friendly hotels along his route. He would divert from the highway when traffic got too intense; I would talk him through twisting streets. "You should see a Macy's up ahead, and a funny intersection - take a left, not the hard left, more like in at 6 out at 11." I called ahead and found him a room at a LaQuinta Inn somewhere north of the city; Steve brought the gerbils in quietly through a back door and curled up for a nice long sleep. We learned 24 days later on the birth of their first litter that Harriet and Hippu had celebrated their arrival in America at the LaQuinta, in the same fashion as many emigrant couples before them had, I'm sure.
Steve finished up his trip bright and early the next morning, and I finally placed phone calls to my gerbil friends with the news, which I had kept secret all along. The following weekend, we had a "blues party" at which the blues met the team of breeders who would introduce them to the US: Donna Anastasi of ABC Gerbils in Nashua, Judi and Emily Poirier of JandEm and Galaxy Gerbils in Wayland, Rebecca Azer of Gerbil Parade in Dracut, and Katie Johnson of Moonstone Gerbils in Upton, a recent graduate in biology who conceptualized the breeding plan for the project.
Within a few months, we were joined in our efforts by Amy Paben in Oregon and Doug White in Washington, who with Katie's help received a shipment of first- and second-generation dilute carriers and started a West Coast breeding project. Nearly two years later, blues are also living or being bred in Virginia, Delaware, Missouri, Nebraska and British Columbia. We are into our third and fourth generations of blue gerbils, breeding for bigger bodies, less white and tufty tails from the best American show lines.
The blue gerbil project was and always has been a collaboration of devoted people who love gerbils. As you can see, the list is long and some of the players' names have been lost to time and circumstance. But the achievement remains, and the gerbil world is the richer for Steve's enterprise, along with the help of many.
Photo Gallery
A good side shot of one of the blue sisters, Aavehaltian Unknown ("Nova")
5 baby blues, born to Hippu and Harriet 12/23/08
On wheel, dilute lilac Aavehaltian Undergraduate ("Gabby") and one of her blue dilute sisters
This poorly focused picture better captures the rosy color that you see in the dilute lilac in hand.
