By which I mean I'm giving this 5 stars for that part.

Hehe.. I instinctively read that as "unusual" so I typed in "usual." Guess we were on the same page. Sorry ROUS! :)

I guess the preload gives it away.. I grew up with rats and they were the best. They all had NIMH names (except for Debbie Gibson inexplicably) and were so smart and fun. My ex grew up with gerbils. So we always had gerbils. I loved them too but it was pretty much like "give me my toilet paper tube" and not a whole lot of love. Trying to keep one on your shoulder like you could with a rat was pretty impossible. It wasn't the plague or anything, but it's true that gerbils are carriers of all sorts of stuff. About 6 months after we got our new gerbils after the old ones passed, my ex wife started breaking out in hives and I didn't. Not knowing what to do, she threw out all her shampoo and soap, laundry detergent, basically took every precaution and nope, still there on her and not on me. We were married so we didn't really get that intimate, but when we did, still, nope. Not on me. Anyway it was driving her insane and nobody knew what was causing it. FINALLY, we figured out that she was the only one who really played with the gerbils outside of the cage (they liked seeing me, but wouldn't stay still like they would with her) and sure enough, they were born near birds in a pet shop and got infested with bird mites and took it home. All it took was one little nibble I'm sure.. but the gerbils never showed any sign of change in their behavior like most animals or people do when they are infected with it.