Little Devil!

[Angelyco]

I just had to share this story of what happened this morning with our younger chinchilla, Pearl.

Background info: We have 2 chinchillas right now, Pearl and Diamond. They are temporarily separated due to some changes with Diamond's diet. Because of this, we rearranged our rodents and Pearl is staying in the rat cage. We let Pearl into the big cage for a little while each day since they miss each other. Last night, we put the wheel into the rat cage, since Pearl is MUCH more active than Diamond, and we wanted to see if the wheel would fit anyway.

When I woke up this morning, Pearl was in the big cage (which is in the bedroom) with Diamond. I thought this was strange, but figured my husband must have let her in before he went to bed for some reason. I shrugged it off and went out to go to the bathroom. As soon as I left the bedroom, I saw the rat cage on the floor, the top wire part was completely separated from the plastic bottom, and food and poo was everywhere.

Okay. So that explains the why, but what about the how?

I went back into the bedroom and woke my hubby up to ask him what happened to the cage. He said he had no idea, all he knows is that he woke up with a chinchilla ON HIS FACE! He didn't bother to check the time when this happened, but he just put her in the big cage and went back to sleep.

I went back out to clean up the mess, and I figured out what must have happened. When she was running on the wheel last night, the whole cage shook, but I didn't think much of it. No harm to her, and the coffee table the cage is on is big enough that I wasn't worried about it falling over. I was wrong! She must have been running so furiously on the wheel that she managed to shake it so far that it fell off the table (thankfully not too far off the ground), and since the wire is held to the plastic bin by 2 clips, it just popped open.

Without knowing what time my husband found her, she could have been running around without any chin-proofing anywhere up to 6 hours. I have no idea what cords she might have destroyed or what she all got in to. I'm hoping she went straight for the bedroom, since under the bed is her favorite place (and we always shut her out of the bedroom during playtime just for that reason), and hoping it didn't take her long to find her way up onto the bed...and onto my hubby's face.

After the shock has worn off now, I can't help but smile or laugh every time I think about my husband waking up to a chinchilla on his face )

 

[Brittany]

Ok I'll admit that having your husband wake up with a chin on his face does sound pretty funny.

But on a more serious note I'm happy for you that nothing bad happened to your chin. Just from reading your post it sounds like the cage was too small not properly secured or possibly both. You're very lucky that your chin didn't get lost in your house, injured, or killed on any of the countless hazards that are in a non-chin proof room. I really hope you've fixed the problem so it can't ever happen again.

What dietary issues are making it necessary to keep them separate sometimes but not all the time? You've mentioned you put her back in the big cage at times.

 

[Angelyco]

Diamond went to the vet last week for squishy/smelly poop. I was instructed to separate them, feed Diamond only hay for the time being and monitor her, then slowly add hay cubes and pellets back into her diet. Pearl visits for only an hour or two, we can still tell the difference with just a few poops that aren't Diamond's. However, Diamond's poop varies widely during the day, and in the morning, I know I wouldn't be able to tell them apart from Pearl's. Even the past few days we've been considering just moving Pearl back in and keeping them both on the same diet, but I'm not sure how well we can monitor Diamond's poop, then.

The rat cage IS too small for a permanent home, but it was big enough for her to jump around in. It wasn't a problem this past week until I put the wheel in. I DO care about my chins, but I wasn't about to go buy another $100 cage that we don't have room for since this is a temporary setup. I wouldn't have put her in the cage if I didn't think it was big/safe enough, but who could foresee a wheel being able to move a still pretty large cage 8+ inches over the side of a low coffee table?