To be fair, she is watching it for a friend who is out of the country for a semester abroad. She knows Chin from camp. He has been in her care for the past 2 summers.
I, on the other hand, am like a "girl" when it comes to rodents...which is what this is part of. It is pretty to look at but it does not like to be held and looks for ways to escape.
I spent some time reading about chinchillas. Here is what I learned.....
They are from the Andes Mountains....
They live in large colonies but can live alone......
Their life span is about 15 years.....
They need a lot of space to roam (hence the chinchilla castle/ 3 story condo that is set up in the bedroom)....
They pee in the same place but poo everywhere...they look like black pieces of rice...hard as a rock....
They can spray you(with urine) if they don't like your smell..
They test you with their teeth to see if they like your smell(translate that to bite---fortunately they don't bite hard)....
They need to have lava stones to bite on as their teeth continue to grow...
They don't take water baths, they take dust bath--special sand that is found in the mountains in lieu of water.....
They can be trained but don't like to be held....(this makes no sense to me)...
They need to have their cages cleaned once a week....
AND they don't do heat very well at all....hence the fan on 24 hrs a day.
My daughter's piece of advice before she left was that Chin likes to escape his cage, so be careful when you feed him.
Well,
how fast can someone come and take this little rodent back to Michigan so I don't have to try and make friends with it so it doesn't spray me and doesn't get lost in her bedroom after he escapes his cage?
NOT FAST ENOUGH!
3 comments:
Sounds like you need a visit from the Chinchilla whisperer.
I think your friend at work sounds like the most wonderful person-wow are you lucky!
I don't do chinchillas!
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