Citronella Plant Safety & Jumping Safety

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LazyOryx

New member
Joined
May 2, 2019
Messages
3
:CSarcasm:

Citronella plant smell:

I live in the Deep South in Mississippi and since our state bird is the mosquito, we have to get creative when dealing with them. It's tough to deal with them in the house and a friend recently brought over several small citronella plants to use indoors. Knock on wood but so far they have kept the mosquitodactyls out of the house!!

While they definitely have that classic citronella/lemon smell, they do not smell nearly as strong as a burning candle or smoker.

When you first get a chin (mine was an unplanned and sudden rescue-adoption) one of the first "chin rules" you hear is basically, Chin+Essential Oils = Bad. Has anyone had any experience with citronella plants and chins? Is there maybe a radius in which plants are safe vs. unsafe? Room size? I know her fur is too dense for a mosquito bite but I do worry about her ears and feet and since these plants are like little miracle workers, we want to keep them where they're at. Obviously, the plant is kept high up and she has no chance of physically interacting with it in any way.

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Jump training question:

My chinchilla is an amazing jumper but an absolutely terrible lander. She seems to only pay attention to the 'going up' part and knows what obstacles are above her but has no clue what's below. I honestly think if she was on the edge of a cliff she would be like, "Oh, look, clouds...let me run and jump up towards themmmmmmmmmmm....*plerp*". I'm wondering if anyone has had similar experiences and if you've had any luck disciplining (i.e. saying "no", snapping, clapping) and/or training to stop this. What's annoying is if she survived the aforementioned cliff jump she would turn right around and do it again and expect my husband or me to catch her. Lately, she's been making a leap at the back of our wooden sleigh bed, which is rounded on the ends like a real sleigh. She runs in circles on the bed at about 1000mph and then suddenly changes direction and springs off one of us and tries to land on the rounded, slippery headboard edge. It's impossible to stand on so it's really impossible to land on yet she'll attempt it over and over until we finally get tired of catching her and make her go back in her house for the night. (Note: Not really relevant but she comes out every night and watches tv with us right before bed as a special treat so this is why she's playing on the bed and not in her usual play area with only chin-safe jump zones.)

I would like a way to stop the unwanted extreme jumping behavior without resorting to the "stop letting her run on the bed at all" option. We actually removed a table from her main play area because she kept jumping up to the table by springing up and off the wall but would then run and leap from the table straight down to the floor. I was terrified she would hurt herself so we removed the table completely but I'd really like her to learn what is okay to jump to/from and what's not okay. She's litterbox trained, has learned which wood is hers to chew and which is not (furniture, the house), and will collect her poos after playing and put them in a pile for me to pick up--I know she's intelligent but this jumping thing just does not seem to be clicking. She responds to a sharp "no" and single hand-clap with everything else.

Thanks in advance for any info you guys can provide!!
 
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