Oh, I almost forgot!

[apocalypsos]

So on the way home from Panera I stopped at Petsmart to see if they had any chinchillas available, which they do, one of which I really want to pick up this week. He's a bit smaller than Elliot and his face is very very dark gray. I think I'm going to name him Dexter. :)

Anyway, while I was there checking out the chins, these three little girls came over to look at the hamsters. One was about ten or twelve, another one was maybe six or seven, and the other one was about two. So there I am, kneeling on the floor and cooing at the chin through the glass, and the middle girl wanders over and goes, "Oh, what's that?" To which I said, "Oh, it's a chinchilla. I have one at home. They're like big hamsters. They're really soft. They make fur coats out of them."

At which point the littlest one wandered over, started pointing at the glass, and saying, "Coots? Coots?"

HEEE. Yes, sweetie, coots. *giggles*

So then I wandered over to look at the reptiles, and the middle one followed me, asking me questions about the skinks and chameleons and frogs and what all the crickets were doing in their aquariums. "... EW." Heh.

And then I had to leave, because if I'd stayed another five minutes I would have bought that chinchilla and a new cage, checking account balance be damned.

Comments

[minaloush.livejournal.com]

You know, I have two chinchillas (and three shortly thereafter) coming of age right now if you're in the market for one.

[fyrdrakken]

Friday night I wandered into two big petstores really close to my house that I'd never actually visited before, with the thought in my mind that I kinda sorta could do with a second rabbit to be a pal for the bunny we've had for close to two years now. Thankfully for my finances, the first store had no bunnies and the second had only one that was bigger than I'd really like to get. (Plus a cage of ferrets that had me squeeing -- must. not. get. ferret!) And then Saturday at the mall I stuck my head into their pet store and they had like a dozen wee bunnies but I refrained from snatching one up and bringing it home, settling for just getting a kitty brush and bunny toy and bunny leash. But one of these days I may wind up with a second rabbit.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, that pet store had a big pretty white bunny. All I can think of when I see bunnies in pet stores is my family's last bunny. My parents took my brother to a fair when he was really little, and there was that game where you throw rings at bottles, and one of the prizes was a bunny. And my mom was like, "Don't let him play that!" and my dad said, "Aw, let the kid play, it's not like he's going to win."

He got it on the winning bottle on the first try. And that's why my dad ended up being the one to take care of the rabbit for the next five million years it was alive. :)

[fyrdrakken]

Yeah, I'm not at all in favor of buying pets on impulse, but. I know Trixie's quality of life has gone up markedly since my sister brought her when she moved back in and then left her when she moved back out -- no longer sharing a house with squealing little kids or another rabbit who loathed her from their first meeting, no longer spending all her time stuck in a too-small cage, being fed better than my sister was feeding her and getting to be freely roaming the living room full-time and harassing the cats and getting lots of petting and attention. And I'd like her to have a bunny buddy because I worry about her being lonely. But I've also heard A) about it being tricky matching up rabbits because of the way they can take a dislike to each other on first meeting and never warm up and B) about how it can be tricky to predict which rabbit you can bring into the house and eventually trust with a certain amount of unsupervised freedom and which rabbit is going to turn out to be a destructive intractable problem.

So I dither about getting another bunny. I keep thinking I should contact a local rabbit rescue place and see if they can point me to a smallish already-housetrained bunny they're trying to place...

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I'm feeling the same way about the new chinchilla, which I'm hoping is still at the store. It's a splurge, to be sure, but Elliot's been so much different since Emmett died. He was so depressed after she died -- which is just weird, saying, "Oh, the chinchilla was depressed," but he SO was -- and he's really friendly and wants attention all the time, and when nobody's around him I can see him kinda sigh and curl up in a ball in the corner of his cage and not do anything, and he just looks like he needs a buddy.

[fyrdrakken]

Ah ha hah -- I just sent an e-mail to the North Texas Rabbit Society asking if it would be possible for me to bring Trixie along on a rabbit inspection to see if she hits it off with any of their current adoptables.

And of course I haven't cleared this with my mother. But then again, I'm thinking the twin arguments of, "As if I weren't already solely responsible for feeding and tending and cleaning up after Trixie," and, "At least it's not a snake like Lauren kept bringing home," are going to count for a lot.

[fyrdrakken]

And yeah, animals can totally get depressed and be missing dead companions. I've got a pair of friends who told me about how a few years back one of their cats died and the other started pining -- according to sclerotic_rings, when they went to an animal shelter they told them up front it was an emergency because they were afraid their remaining cat was going to die of grief.