Pippi enjoys playing with her wooden bird ladder.

Those of us who count gerbils among our friends are usually looking for new, safe toys for our gerbils. In this tip, we'll show you two toys your gerbils will love. Neither of these toys are in the hamster and gerbil aisle of your pet shop, but most gerbils like these two toys better than those!

Wooden Bird Ladder.
You'll find that other areas of the pet shop have toys that gerbils will really like. For example, in the bird aisle, you can find wooden bird ladders. These make great gerbil toys, because gerbils can crawl up and down the ladder if it's resting at an angle, they can crawl through the rungs of the ladder, they can use the ladder as structure to hold bedding in place when they build tunnels in the bedding, and they also use the ladder as a giant chew toy to keep their teeth trim!

Buster peers through his wooden bird ladder before chewing on a rung.Most wooden bird ladders are safe. Either buy a ladder that doesn't have hooks attached to it, or make sure that you remove the hooks before giving the ladder to your gerbils. Also, some bird ladders have small plastic beads on the rungs. Avoid these, too, because plastic can hurt your gerbils if they get it in their stomachs. Finally, although bird ladders should use pet-safe dyes, if you have a choice between a colored bird ladder and a plain bird ladder, choose the plain one.

Brown Paper Lunch Sack.

Buster and Herman play with a brown paper lunch sack.You've probably noticed that the gerbil toys in pet shops are usually pretty expensive. (And some of them aren't even safe for gerbils to have!) We've told you before about how much gerbils love toilet paper tubes. You don't have to spend a lot of money to make your gerbils very happy. Another example is how much fun your gerbils will have with a brown paper lunch sack! Gerbils can crawl in and out of the sack. They can crawl inside the sack and dig in the corners of it. They can push the lunch sack around the tank with their noses. They can hide inside the lunch sack or even use it as a place to sleep. And, of course, they can chew the sack to shreds and use it for bedding material. It seems like gerbils like any toy that makes a lot of noise, and boy, will a paper lunch sack ever make a lot of crinkling noise as your gerbils play with it.

To make sure that the lunch sack is safe for your gerbils, just get plain brown paper lunch sacks. Skip lunch sacks that have a shiny coating or designs on them and stick with the plain lunch sacks, which you'll know are safe. One of the best things about this toy is that you can buy a whole bag of paper lunch sacks for hardly any money at all, and your gerbils will have hours of fun before you run out of lunch sacks for them.