Chinchilla

I saw a funny riff on the iPod character, a black chinchilla with the earbuds. It said, iChew.

And man, they weren't kidding! I had a chinchilla, Maxwell Smart, during a brief time in my childhood, before I left for university and my parents (mom) decided he was too much to look after and gave him away to a petting zoo or something like that.

Max was a terrible chewer. He ate paint off the basement floor, chewed walls, wallpaper, bricks, carpet, wood, cords, everything that wasn't nailed down or was nailed down he chewed to pieces. He was also astoundingly cocky and I once saw him in a near-death leap from the tall Yucca flowerpot onto kitchen tile, clutching a popsicle stick vertically in his teeth. We gasped, and the popsicle stick flicked harmlessly to the side upon landing instead of impailing Max's little lentil brain.

Small-brained, he still outwitted us on many, many occasions. He would scurry into gopher holes, run under cars, hide inside cement bricks, under the barbecue and lick grease off the bottom (made him very sick) and even into the ductwork & heating of our house. That was a funny and exasperating time, he was loose in the vents when a vent cap came off. He had the run of the house all night and we had little chinchilla poops everywhere as evidence. Everytime he saw us, he would race back into an opened vent--my dad finally outsmarted him using raisins and a mop to reach out and block the exposed vent when Max went for the raisins.

Then we read later that too many raisins can poison chinchillas. Max liked eating bizarre and intriguing things. Savoury and sweet were his favourite, like dried vegetables, coffee beans, prunes and raisins.

He had a princely cage, 3 stories with a coffee can (Maxwell's) to sit in on the loft level and a fishbowl to sleep in on his bedroom level. He was difficult to handle so to get him out of his cage we used to remove the fishbowl he was sleeping in (they are nocturnal so sleep all day) and shake him out of it. He hated that, but he was a hisser and a biter normally.

When we cleaned his cage we removed the 3 story part and left the cage bottom, and sometimes Max went for a ride in his fishbowl onto the cement floor. We went through 2 fishbowls that way, with Max in them when they broke. He was fine.

Chinchillas clean themselves by jumping into a rubbermaid of volcanic ash and rolling about, flinging dust everywhere. When they are unwell or can't clean themselves with the dust, their luxurious fur feels greasy and looks it. You don't even wash a chinchilla.

They are brave and foolhardy creatures and live forever. They have a remarkable lifespan and can live for up to 20 years. Max liked to pretend he was a punk 'skater kid, and he would run alongside walls like a skater on a board. They also need lots and lots of exercise outside their cage at night, and without it they resort to stress habits, like fur pulling. Max let us know he needed more playtime and a bigger cage by pulling out his tail fur. Charming.

Chinchillas are definitely challenging pets and incredibly destructive. I wouldn't really recommend them to anyone, as they belong in Peru habitating high up in the volcanic mountains in caves.