Cleaning the Chinchilla, If That's What the Kids are Calling It These Days
It’s hard to believe, but there was a period in my life when I had spare time, and spare attention to devote to helpless creatures. That’s how we wound up with a home full of pets. At the height of our insanity and before Abbie’s birth, we owned as many as five chinchillas, five fish tanks, two cats, a dog, and a rabbit. We also had an ecosystem of insects and arachnids in our basement, but that was more of a matter of they owned us.
I realized we needed to thin our herd before we even knew Abbie was coming. Through well-timed give-aways on unsuspecting friends and relatives, and a few deaths that I swear were unrelated to neglect, we’ve pared our responsibilities down to two cats, one dog, one fish tank, and one chinchilla. This leaves me with a manageable amount of work between dealing with a toddler who gets into everything and her two understudies.
The cats may be the most needy pets. They require fed twice a day, their litter scooped daily, their water refilled as they splash it all over the floor, and assorted hairballs cleaned up.
The dog is also very needy, requiring food daily, bihourly trips outside, and shooing off furniture and visitors. Unlike the cats, the dog actually contributes to our household by helping to entertain the kids and cleaning up food-related messes, so her drain on my time is a wash.
By contrast, the fish are worthless except for the occasional child-distracting sparkle from the water. At least they look pretty when they’re not dying due to old age, random disease, or spite. I need only feed them daily and change their water every week or two or whenever I get around to it because the algae is growing too thick to see the fish.
The chinchilla is off in a corner, and I barely notice him. His food and water can last for days, so he doesn’t even need daily attention. We just need to periodically refill his dishes and give him the occasional bit of love, preferably in peanut form. And clean his cage.
To clean the chinchilla’s cage, I remove the floor trays, dump their contents,* wipe them down, refill them with fresh woodchips, and return them to the cage. It’s a simple process, or at least it was before we had kids, hence why we now have 80% fewer chinchillas to muck up the cage. More than any other pet maintenance activity, I have to fight the kids while moving the trays to keep them from “helping.” Those trays full of loose woodchips are bigger child magnets than Goldfish, sugary cereals, and shiny objects combined. A tray of woodchips melds the joy of playing in a sandbox, with the pleasure of plucking objects off the ground and gnawing on them.
I do my best to keep the kids out of those trays while they’re on the ground, but it’s hard when I pour in the fresh woodchips and spread them around. When they see me batting in the tray, their imitation instinct kicks in along with an innate desire to help, and they joyfully dig right in. I can keep Abbie out of it by kicking her outside while I work inside. It’s especially easy to let her sneak out the door when I take the tray outside to dump it in the compost bin. She thinks she’s doing something verboten, but she’s actually staying out of my hair while getting exercise, although she may also be playing in the neighbor’s forbidden garden.
The twins take a different mindset. I’m used to doing child-alluring activities, such as eating and emptying the dishwasher, in front of them while they sit or lay powerless to do anything but watch longingly. Now they can crawl, and they seem to have learned the skill explicitly to make beelines for prohibited objects. The last time I refilled the trays, I had to carry Tory and his fistful of woodchips across the room, and while I did, Ian snuck into the tray, grabbing his woodchips. In the time it took to empty his hand and carry him across the room, Tory was back into the tray. Eventually I sat at the tray to spread the woodchips with my back to the boys while they climbed over me and Abbie stood at the door wondering why I wasn’t around to yell at her for playing in the neighbor’s flowers.
Besides the disgusting factor, the worst part about the kids playing in the trays is they spread woodchips throughout the room. It took me 24 hours to break out the vacuum to clean the floor last time. I didn’t have any other free time between letting the dog out, feeding the pets, letting the dog in, scooping the cat litter, and letting Abbie in after she snuck out one of those times I opened the door for the dog.
* Those contents go into the compost bin, where they make excellent mulch/compost. The woodchips help garden plants retain moisture, while the chinchilla leavin’s supply the love and fertilizer plants need to grow big enough to attract nearby dogs and children.
I realized we needed to thin our herd before we even knew Abbie was coming. Through well-timed give-aways on unsuspecting friends and relatives, and a few deaths that I swear were unrelated to neglect, we’ve pared our responsibilities down to two cats, one dog, one fish tank, and one chinchilla. This leaves me with a manageable amount of work between dealing with a toddler who gets into everything and her two understudies.
The cats may be the most needy pets. They require fed twice a day, their litter scooped daily, their water refilled as they splash it all over the floor, and assorted hairballs cleaned up.
The dog is also very needy, requiring food daily, bihourly trips outside, and shooing off furniture and visitors. Unlike the cats, the dog actually contributes to our household by helping to entertain the kids and cleaning up food-related messes, so her drain on my time is a wash.
By contrast, the fish are worthless except for the occasional child-distracting sparkle from the water. At least they look pretty when they’re not dying due to old age, random disease, or spite. I need only feed them daily and change their water every week or two or whenever I get around to it because the algae is growing too thick to see the fish.
The chinchilla is off in a corner, and I barely notice him. His food and water can last for days, so he doesn’t even need daily attention. We just need to periodically refill his dishes and give him the occasional bit of love, preferably in peanut form. And clean his cage.
To clean the chinchilla’s cage, I remove the floor trays, dump their contents,* wipe them down, refill them with fresh woodchips, and return them to the cage. It’s a simple process, or at least it was before we had kids, hence why we now have 80% fewer chinchillas to muck up the cage. More than any other pet maintenance activity, I have to fight the kids while moving the trays to keep them from “helping.” Those trays full of loose woodchips are bigger child magnets than Goldfish, sugary cereals, and shiny objects combined. A tray of woodchips melds the joy of playing in a sandbox, with the pleasure of plucking objects off the ground and gnawing on them.
I do my best to keep the kids out of those trays while they’re on the ground, but it’s hard when I pour in the fresh woodchips and spread them around. When they see me batting in the tray, their imitation instinct kicks in along with an innate desire to help, and they joyfully dig right in. I can keep Abbie out of it by kicking her outside while I work inside. It’s especially easy to let her sneak out the door when I take the tray outside to dump it in the compost bin. She thinks she’s doing something verboten, but she’s actually staying out of my hair while getting exercise, although she may also be playing in the neighbor’s forbidden garden.
The twins take a different mindset. I’m used to doing child-alluring activities, such as eating and emptying the dishwasher, in front of them while they sit or lay powerless to do anything but watch longingly. Now they can crawl, and they seem to have learned the skill explicitly to make beelines for prohibited objects. The last time I refilled the trays, I had to carry Tory and his fistful of woodchips across the room, and while I did, Ian snuck into the tray, grabbing his woodchips. In the time it took to empty his hand and carry him across the room, Tory was back into the tray. Eventually I sat at the tray to spread the woodchips with my back to the boys while they climbed over me and Abbie stood at the door wondering why I wasn’t around to yell at her for playing in the neighbor’s flowers.
Besides the disgusting factor, the worst part about the kids playing in the trays is they spread woodchips throughout the room. It took me 24 hours to break out the vacuum to clean the floor last time. I didn’t have any other free time between letting the dog out, feeding the pets, letting the dog in, scooping the cat litter, and letting Abbie in after she snuck out one of those times I opened the door for the dog.
* Those contents go into the compost bin, where they make excellent mulch/compost. The woodchips help garden plants retain moisture, while the chinchilla leavin’s supply the love and fertilizer plants need to grow big enough to attract nearby dogs and children.
posted by Matt at
11:13 PM
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