I saw them huddled together on the floor of the cage. [See page 54].
Poor little things! I don’t think they did sleep together. The box was partitioned inside, and I think each kept entirely to its own compartment; and Peter, being the male, would come off worst as to nesting material.
I noticed that he was not well on the 25th January. The entry in my diary is: “Peter looks miserable, eats scarcely anything, and sleeps twenty-three hours and three-quarters out of the twenty-four.”
If then I had only known! If I had kept him inside my room, furnished the serge bag with heaps of cotton wool, and never let him spend the night in the outside cage, I should in all probability have saved his little life.
It never entered my head at this time that he had got a chill. I thought he was “out of sorts” with the approach of spring. I remembered that Bunty had seemed seedy early in February the year before, and that with complete change of diet she had quickly recovered. I remembered that I had given her meal-worms, which she ate greedily from my hand.
“Finger-sauce” always tempted her, whereas my poor, wild little Peter would never come near me. He would feed while I was in the room, but if I stirred so much as a hand would be off as fast as he could go. This was most disheartening after nine months’ captivity, and after having reared him from babyhood. There was something inherently untamable in him, and though I longed inexpressibly to mother and warm and coax him, I was powerless to make him better. His weakness increased, he became cruelly emaciated, and I was compelled to watch day by day the advance of a mortal illness.
He would never eat from my hand, and though I put meal-worms into his food dish, he would not touch them. Sunflower seeds at this time were almost the only things he would eat, and but few of them. I was afraid that an exclusive diet of them was bad for his liver, and therefore gave them but sparingly. Poor little fellow! had I only known it, they were the best food for him, being most nutritious.