My wife had chinchillas for pets. She worked in a pet store and brought home many rescue chinchillas from owners who no longer wanted them. Today the last rescue chinchilla died. We’ve been calling her old lady for at least the last 6 years. Our best guess on her age would be 18 years. Not quite a chinchilla record, but not bad for an animal with a ‘normal’ life span of 12 to 15 years. For the past 6 years, this little girl was acting her age. The inquisitiveness normal in chinchillas was almost absent in her. We kept her comfortable and fed.
Today she left this world. I like to think she is now with the lovely lady who saved this little chinchilla from a much earlier death. We got her as a retiree of a pet breeding program/business. They don’t keep them very long after they stop breeding. We were very luck to find her. She was the second chinchilla in the house. Many more followed, but the first two were my wife’s favorites. They are both gone now.
I found a couple of pictures of this little chinchilla, so I though I would share those.
AWWW! So cute! May she rest in peace. What was her name?
Strange, I thought I had captions on the pictures. Her name was Stacy.
Very sweet old lady… RIP, Stacy.
I used to try to put captions on the pictures and they’d never show up, so I just stopped trying… never something I had the time to fiddle with, but if you figure out what the problem is, let me know.
For how many years was Stacy a part of your family?
I’m thinking we had her for about 11 years. I can’t seem to remember when we got started having chinchillas as pets. We’ve had them forever.
Cute one. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
You and your wife are good people. Thanks for rescuing those chins.
D Swain
Thanks for reading my post. Yes, my wife was good people. The chinchillas were her pride, joy and comfort. At one time we had close to twenty of the little animals. Some we found good homes for, others we kept until their last days. I’ve seen animals that were aggressive to anyone coming close to the cage curl up in her lap. She had away with most animals. At the time of her death, 5 years ago, we had 16 chinchillas. There are only 6 left. A few we lost within months of my wife’s death. I’m not sure if they missed her or not, but given the lives they had before they got here, I guess it was just their times. I don’t rescue anymore chinchillas, but I will continue to give the rest of my wife’s pets everything they need until their time on earth is over.