Chinchilla Fun

Today my mom brought home a little pet harness and leash for small animals. I had been wanting to try it on Deva, one of my little chinchillas. Now, many of you have never met Deva, but she is just about the tamest chinchilla ever. I can just kinda push her over and pet her belly. Easy mark. So operation, "Walk the chinchilla" was beginning to take shape.

Task One: Get Chinchilla Out of Cage. This was pretty easy as she is almost too trusting and can easily be tempted by a raisin. So chinchilla out and ready to proceed with Task two.

Task Two: Put Harness on Chinchilla. This isn't as easy as one might think. You have a little creature who looks a lot chubbier than she actually is and that can shed her fur at will and (the most obvious part of the operation) does not want said harness put on her. So my little Deva squirms and squirms, gets the strap in her mouth so she can slip it through. Puts her arms out in a strange position so it is impossible to line up the straps. Ugh. Worse that a toddler getting ready for bed. But the end of everything I was wearing about a chinchillas worth of fur and I had a very pissed off little ball of chinchilla fury.

Task Three: Attach leash. Deva tried to make a break for it with the harness on before I could attach the leash. She wound up just jumping and flipping on the bed wrestling with the harness. I got the leash on on put her on the floor. Squirt! She popped right out of the harness and ran under the bed.

Task Four: Lure chinchilla out with piece of papaya and repeat task two.

Success!?! She HATED the whole thing and while on the leash would just flip around and circle her tail trying to figure out what was happening. I know she didn't like it, but it was still really funny. Laughing at the misery of others, ah, good times.

I don't think that it help that (I think) she knew she looked utterly stupid. Once back on the bed she struggled with the harness and flipped and flipped until she just decided to lay there, dejected until I took the harness off.

Oh well. I was good for a laugh and now I know what to do when she's naughty 'cause she was starting to have fun with her old chinnie punishment.

Eventually I'll put up a picture. Eventually.