I would like to take this opportunity to introduce two very good friends of mine, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Fred Dibnah. These gerbils were bought for me by my good lady as an early valentines present and over the last few weeks have been getting them used to being handled and making them at home.

I’ve noticed that they’re quite inquisitive little fellas as well as little shredding machines on four legs. What a shame they’re not interested in their wheel though. I had hopes that sometime soon I could build a little rodent powered light. They made something similar over at Make Magazine once but they failed to realise that it was alternating current being generated and as a result the little mouse powered light flickered on and off.

Its taken this long to be able to take a photograph or two of them both. Gerbils on the whole are quite jumpy creatures and as a result all my early photographs of them either had part of a tail as they jumped out of shot or nothing at all but as them are becoming more and more tamer by the day, they can’t get enough of the camera.