You seem to have astonishing insight into the thought processes of gerbils. Not that it's a complex subject ...
Here:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/11/meet-the-hamster-shredder/
Put your gerbil to work doing something useful.
This site is just chock-full of cool ideas:
http://snag.wordpress.com/tag/cool/
The missus’ cat thinks the same way.
He gets scared of something, doesn’t remember what it was that he was scared of, THAT frightens him, and he takes off.