Dan and I recently got a new chinchilla buddy for Diesel. We actually got him a few weeks ago, on Superbowl Sunday, from the chinchilla rescue center down in the South Bay. Since Indy died in early June of last year, it’s taken me a while to get over the loss since he was one of my first pets (along with Diesel), and it was my first time losing a pet. Chinchillas are very social animals, so we’d been considering getting another chinchilla to keep Diesel company for a while now, but kept putting it off since it’s significantly more work to take care of chinchillas (twice as much feed, twice as much shedding, twice as much poo, you get the idea) and thins were busy at the end of the year with holidays and traveling.
Diesel was looking particularly bored lately though, so we decided to go for it and pay the chinchilla rescue center a visit. The ladies that take in these chinchillas are amazing women and they are really dedicated to taking in and caring for orphaned chinchillas and finding new “forever homes” for them. Both Diesel and Indy had come from the chinchilla rescue. If you live in the Bay Area and are considering a chinchilla as a pet, please consider going to a rescue center instead of buying chinchillas at pet stores. There are several chinchillas whose owners were unable to care for them anymore, or were found abandoned — sometimes in really awful circumstances — and it’s important that they find a permanent home with loving owners. To learn more or to see available chinchillas for adoption, please visit ChinchillaRescue.org.
Piper (at left) and Diesel in their cage together.
After having Diesel “meet” and run around with some of the other chinchillas at the rescue center, there was one in particular that seemed to be pretty compatible with him. Only a year old, he was pretty big — almost as large as Diesel! Usually the chinchillas at the rescue centers have names that were given to them by their previous owners (Diesel was Booshie when we adopted him, and Indy had been Petey), but this new chinchilla had not been given a name, so the rescue center had labeled his cage “No-Name.” So we decided to adopt “No-Name” and bring him home with us. We threw around some names for him (among them were Oreo, Pepper, Bullet) for about a week or so, but the name that seemed to stick was Piper. There’s no really story or reasoning behind the name — Dan just thought it was a cute name for the new guy, and it just sort of rolled off our tongues without even thinking after a while.
Chinchillas are supposed to be kept in separate cages for the first couple weeks, and you let them spend more and more time together as they gradually get used to one another. It’s already been well over two weeks since we brought Piper into our home, and he and Diesel have been getting along great! There were some minor squabbles here and there as they’ve tried to show their dominance to each other (very common among chinchillas), but they are now happily living together in the same cage and seem like best friends! It’s especially adorable when they groom each other and give each other scratches. It seems like Piper is even more compatible with Diesel than Indy was. (Although of course, we still miss Indy a lot.) We actually haven’t taken too many photos yet since Piper rarely sits still, but here are a couple photos that we took last week.
A wide-eyed Piper and a grumpy-looking Diesel.
That’s all for now, but you can be sure to see more photos and videos posted of these two cuties in the months to come! 
His quest for fame will have to be rewarded by some other means….
Recent Comments