Goodbye to an old friend

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.