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Chinchillas As Pets: What To Do, What To Buy, Who To Fuck. Matt - 11.27.01

A lot of people have e-mailed in asking where I've been, and frankly, I thought that even the most casual reader would've picked up on the fact that I suffer from an acute form of the rare disease Lügenzuihnenitis, which forces me into temporary comas which only strike (quite remarkably) during periods when you see no updates on the site. So you should really feel ashamed if you were one of the ones who filed complaints with the lack of new articles...I was deathly ill. Much like the allure of another Scary Movie sequel. I fell asleep right after posting that Zelda article on the 14th of October - really burns my devil gullet that I missed approximately fifty reruns of The Jeffersons. Have pity on any soul in my way should I find out I missed the episode where that millionaire tries to make Marla Gibbs think better of herself by way of front row play tickets and expensive jewelry.

Actually, the truth is that I walked into Petland a few weeks ago and walked out a changed man. Well, not really a changed man - more like the same man now owning a really expensive giant mouse. More on that in a bit. Consider today's article a lesson in pet ownership, coming from a really bad and overwhelmingly neglectful source: me. Here's how it started:

I began taking a vested interest in my fish tank about a month or so ago, which by that point had deteriorated from the damage which started about five months ago. See, I totally forgot that I was supposed to feed the fish, change the filter cartridges, and remove the dead guys. I reasoned my actions as succinctly as I could: I was creating my own personal little ecosystem, where the fish would live from the soil and carcasses of their brothers, just as we do here in our own animal kingdom. In truth, I couldn't be bothered with the fish tank because I was too busy collecting ceramic busts of Japanese women. Sorry, those new Transformers toys didn't impress me, and I've got to collect something, right?

So I go out after some coaxing, buy a whole new tank, a whole new filter, new accessories, gravel, even new fish! To the untrained spectator it'd even look like I cared about the little swimmies. In reality, the old tank was located near my kitchen and the smell was really taking the punch out of my nightly dinner regime of Ramen Noodles.

Sad thing is, the photo you see above is the after picture. You know how we see a faceless cloak with a sickle and immediately associate it with death? Well, fish must see my face and know their fate is imminent. I have an aquatic touch of death. Fifteen fish, ranging from koi to snails to baby crabs and catfish, all meeting cruel and unusual punishment by my own misguided hand. It was explained to me later that making a medley out of my various squirt bottles of fish algae antiseptic and tank cleaners wouldn't clean the thing with more efficiency -- it'd simply kill the fish very quickly.

They don't teach you these kinda things in college. Or maybe they do? I never should've dropped out. Twice.


For a short while after this I turned to plants for companionship - but those things died even quicker than the fish. Perhaps the fact that my apartment has no windows and is smoky enough to flavor bacon had something to do with it. I tried finding quiet solace in the Forever Bonsai, but even with the window-box's claims that this plant never dies, I couldn't help feeling like I was cheating myself -- after all, it's just a buncha plastic leaves, right? I can't nuzzle up to plastic leaves. I can't buy miniature Christmas stockings and fill it's rambunctious red pocket with plastic tree leaf treats, now could I? No -- it was back to the drawing board for me.


I consulted my favorite from the aforementioned collection of Japanese women ceramic busts, and sought some sort of epiphany on pets in the home. I was searching for answers. What I got was a reminder of that age old joke about people having more chins than a Chinese telephone book. I couldn't get past that, so I decided to use phonetic similarity to my advantage and create a chart using the Japanese 'Chin' woman and possible pets she was silently suggesting:


I narrowed down the (inarguably tough) options down to a final two: Chinese apple pets or a chinchilla. By my logic, I just bought both, ate the apple, and kept the rat. So today's lesson in pet owning won't teach you how to use stemmed cloves to make pretty faces on fruit - instead, we'll be learning about Bolivia's greatest export aside from sweatshop labor and chocolate covered ants: the chinchilla.

Now, before we get moving, I should tell you that I'm somewhat of a connoisseur of overpriced rodent pets and other various furry mammalian pals. My parents' house still has a few rabbits and hamsters crawling through the walls unaccounted for. I like to imagine them having formed some sort of makeshift jungle tribe in the walls of their house, but the reality is, they're probably dead in there and that reasoning would go a long way in explaining the stench of the place. Point is, I know my pets. I can look at this chinchilla and know by comparison if it was worth the money. Poor Chinny has her work cut out for her, as she came with a big pricetag: a hundred and thirty bucks and a fifteen-minute conversation from Hell with the Petland guy, which went something like this:

Petland Guy: So, you know you've gotta buy a water bottle for this thing, right? And a food bowl, dust bath, and oh yeah - cedar chips!
Matt: I understand that part - I just don't understand why I need two water bottles and that much dust bath. Are you working on commission or something?
Petland Guy: No, no, it's nothing like that. I just want to see the chinchilla get a good home. Might I suggest the 24 karat gold 4-tier hotel cage?
Matt: Look, I just wanted a chinchilla - not an outlet for bipolar depressive spending.
Petland Guy: Aight. Okay, let's ring this up. You wanted a Chinchilla, dust bath, cedar chips, water bottle, food bowl, and that two-thousand dollar parrot over there.
Matt: I didn't say anything about a parrot!
Petland Guy: Consider it - it'd make a great companion for your chinchilla!
Matt: Hey, wait a second - what does your pin say?
Petland Guy: "Jesus Wept".
Matt: Oh nice, you're a Hellraiser fan then?
Petland Guy: Good heavens, no! An 'S' got rubbed off, it's supposed to say "Jesus Swept". Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
Matt: Okay, can I pay now? What's my total?
Petland Guy: Six hundred thousand dollars.
Matt: I said I didn't want the gold cage, you eel.

The guy looked a lot like the Toxic Avenger too, only with a big greasy ponytail and a themed t-shirt that appeared to have a lot to do with death metal. Much like Ms. Petrillo, I digress. Here's a picture of the beast:


I know, it looks dead. That's just the chinchilla's cute way of saying, "I don't want you to ever touch or come near me." Silly Wabbit. Chinchillas were originally brought to this country for their super-valuable fur, which feels a lot like those throw blankets department stores sell for 14.99. I guess the boosted price comes into play because their fur is grey, universally the most expensive color. Eventually ranchers realized that their docile disposition and cute Mickey Mouse ears lent themselves to house pet appeal, and now they're pretty much everywhere. (except Newark, where people would eat them) Their big selling point? Odorless. For me, living in a basement apartment with no real windows, the idea that I'd come home to the stench of urine every night wasn't high up on the pro list. Plus, my landlord doesn't allow pets. I took his secret meaning and realized that he meant he doesn't allow pets he knows about. Chinchillas are small, fairly quiet creatures who love art. He'll never know! Course, unless...


Chalk this one up to personal ingenuity. I figured that if I put the chinchilla cage box at the forefront of my paper recyclables bunch, he'd never think I'd be so blatantly stupid as to actually have an animal inside the house. He probably thinks I just have a baby now.

Now, here's what's needed to keep your chinchilla happy. For those interested, they're probably the easiest pets in the world to take care of. I had more problems with gerbils than this thing. Occasionally she waddles out of her little box, eats a pellet, and waddles back in. Wallah - animal entertainment breaking the mold, nationwide. The cage runs for a good amount of money, amazingly less than the chinchilla cost me but still enough to make me curse the day I became an impulse buyer in a pet shop. It's a small, sparse affair:


I didn't clean the cage yet because I feel it's important for the chinchilla to learn to clean up after herself. If she's gonna shit all over the place, she should at least stick to a strictly albino wheat diet so at least the crap matches the cedar chips. I mean, this is just embarrassing. Would you have people over if your shit was all over the house? Luckily for my rat fink, the only creatures she'll ever meet are the possible fruit flies being formed over at Fishtank Land in the living room.

Cedar chips, by the way, are probably the messiest substance concoction on the planet. I'm finding this stuff all over the house. In the shower, in the bed - even in my car. It's like that friggin monkey virus from Outbreak. Actually, these aren't even cedar chips - they're the non-cedar variety, because as it was explained to me, chinchillas will chew cedar and get some kind of weird alien plasma disease. I don't understand what animal could use cedar chips, because they're all stupid enough to eat it and I'd assume none are immune to the high radiation apparently given off by it. I guess that's another one for the scholars.

Anyways, my trusty Chinchilla Guidebook (more on that later) told me that the little guys need some kind of alcove in their cage so they can rest and plot with peace and privacy. The wording got the message across clear as a bell - if you don't put some kind of hideaway box in the cage, the chinchilla is going to be miserable. Pity that I didn't get the Chinchilla Guidebook until a few weeks after she was sitting here in her cage with no place to hide. This would probably go a long way in explaining the frequency of her biting my hand, but eventually I learned my lesson and added a box:


Now, the book said that these guys are nocturnal, but all day long I hear her rustling away in there, obviously up to something. I'm just not sure what. Now granted, chinchillas are small and virtually harmless, but this kind of suspicious behavior has left me pretty uneasy. What's she doing in there? Visions of murder plans and the odd theory about mass robot drone production come into my head all day long, and it's gotten to the point where I fear for my own safety while I sleep. Because while I sleep - that's when the chinchilla's at her worst. I know I'm going to wake up one morning covered in rat shit with my hands taped to the wall and an acid-laced pendulum swinging above my forehead. I've always known that...I just didn't think it'd happen because of a chinchilla. See, they make these weird overt chirping sounds. At first I thought this was her way of getting across her feelings of insurmountable fear when my Giant Hand From Hell approached, but what with all the inner-box shenanigans and general cold war tactics, I'm beginning to think this mutant squirrel has learned to speak Morse code and is signaling her mighty brothers down from the Chinchilla Mothership to do me in.


But then I get a look at that sweet, sweet obese mouse. Is this the face of a killer? HEH think not! The only thing this chinchilla could hurt is my pride: her face is around 15% more symmetrical than mine, and thus, she is prettier.

Now, here's a bit of info on some of the other chinchilla necessities you'll have to buy should you decide to own this modern-day Raticate:


Have you ever wondered why pet rodents and other small animals seem to exist solely to escape from their cage? I don't think it's because of claustrophobia or even an unnerving idea that the ice cream man is right outside - instead, I'm quite certain that they're always trying to get away because we, the proud owners, offer them the poorest menu selection on the planet. I understand that they've never tasted the sweet nectar of, say, Doritos or kimchee, but I simply refuse to believe that they're happy living on what even the package itself can only describe as 'chinchilla pellets'. Where's the variety? And I mean real variety, not the occasionally freeze-dried banana thrown into the lot. I firmly believe that all caged animals would be must happier at home if we served them three different healthy meals a day, with the recipes courtesy of Richard Simmons' Deal-A-Meal phenomenon. Let's see this chinchilla try escaping her cage with some hamburger casserole sitting in her bright red food bowl.

I'm actually not even kidding - my pet rabbit back home has become so accustomed to more humanesque food that it sprays urine on anyone who tries to feed it pellets.

Secondly, we have the Chinchilla Dust Bath. In their native land, chinchillas used some kind of volcanic ash to 'clean' their fur, which is so exuberant and shiny that even they know it's worth taking care of. I'm sure if someone tipped them off that this behavior aids their potential evolution into a winter coat, they'd be a little less apt for self-grooming. Anyway, Petland Guy told me this stuff was a necessary evil, citing how much chinchillas 'loved the dust bath' and how much I would 'love watching it take the dust bath.' He kept putting the word 'the' in front of 'dust bath' so much that the whole thing seemed like this epic event I could not afford to miss. So I bought a jar of the dust bath.


Okay, so it is pretty cute. Chiny Chin Chilla makes her way over to the pool of sand, sniffs it, and starts rolling around in the stuff with such maniacal lunacy that you'd swear she was trying to ward off an all-encompassing bodily infestation of crabs. It's pretty wild to see this usually timid-beyond-belief creature drop her inhibitions and get all bout it bout it with a troth full of sand ash. I'm not sure if it's 130 dollars worth of wild, but you know that old saying? Something that sheds a positive light on buying really expensive rats? If you do, e-mail me with it, because I'm really regretting not plugging the money down for a Game Cube instead at this point.

Now, there's just one final issue I'd like to discuss in today's Pet Guide. Owning a chinchilla is a fun, interesting, only-sometimes-reprehensible experience that many would enjoy. But it comes with a price they don't ring up at the register. See, when you own a chinchilla, you're basically telling the world that there's something wrong with you and there's some innate need that only owning an Andes marsupial could satiate. You are one with a void, and one with a rat. My advice? Hide the chinchilla from those who'd oppose it. Don't bring chicks into your place and start screaming about how you own 'this cute little chinchilla,' because 9 times out of 10, the girl will just look at you and know you have a small dick. If you can't hide the chinchilla outright, just follow my lead and put something even more ridiculous in front of it's cage so nobody notices it:


I opted for the tricky Christmas Tree In Mid-November distraction. If you look closely, you can see the chinchilla popping her head out, wondering if she slept for a month or if I was just an idiot when it comes to timely decor.

So there's your dog and pony show. All in all, I'd have to say that the little furry trashbag is pretty interesting and a decent, if somewhat domineering in bed house pet. But, let's say you don't have the permission, ambission, or cash flow to get a ridiculous living animal. I've got you covered. For just 2.99, you can get ridiculous fake animals!


12 Jungle Animals: Some of us get chinchillas, others get a dozen plastic jungle animals. Oddly, of the 12 'jungle animals', only three have ever been in real jungles in the wild by my count. I'm not sure when the deer became one with the tropics, but such geographical oversights are overlooked in favor of much larger oversights: since when are deer twice as large as elephants? I knew something was up when I noticed the slim piece of black tape over the 'realistic animals!' description on the package. I dunno, I guess it could lead to a funny exchange between the roided deer and elephant, where the latter suggests that the deer has elephantitis, and hilarity ensues. Or maybe not. Either way, these little guys are a nice change of pace after reading up on my other ridiculous animal in the Official Chinchilla Guidebook:


Please. I just plopped down 130 bucks for a big rat who hates me. You think I'm gonna start checking regularly for twat abnormalities now? Why would I care about that, it's not like I'm gonna start making the thing have babies. (seems I can't impregnate it...yet) Oh well. As Kim Deal said on her imaginary solo tour, 'I ain't no Breeder, anyway.'

PS - Chinchillas will accept raisins as a special treat. They really love them. But only if you say 'Do you want a widdle waissy woo???' before shoving it down their throat. Personal experience.

- Matt
matt@x-entertainment.com
I-Mockery
AIM: xecharchar

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