It's been a bittersweet weekend. This morning, Jen got an email saying that one of our guys, Brian, had died on Friday.
Brian was our white and black chinchilla. For those of you who don't know the story, Jen found four chinchillas at a garage sale. They were sitting out in the sun last summer during a horrible heat wave, which is deadly for chinchillas. Rather than leave them, she made an offer on them and the cages and took them home. We didn't know anything about their history, and the woman who owned him said they guessed he was about 2 years old, but then again, this same woman said that his cagemate Stewie was a boy (she's not!) and that the other girl was sterile (again, we proved that one wrong as well). We honestly weren't sure if the four would even make it through the weekend, but with some love and care, they did survive and grow to be healthy chubby little guys. After we rescued him, we took him to the vet, where we did discover he had a heart murmur, a very common ailment with chinchillas, but it never stopped him from living a full life.
Although a small boy, he was very mellow and overall a friendly guy. We guess that he was at least 5, making him one of our oldest boys, but our unique boy as he only had a half-black tail and dark ears.
Fortunately, Brian passed on his wonderful traits to his two babies, a little girl named Boo and a little boy named Scout, who also has his white coloring, but is beige (like his mother) where Brian was black.
We have both enjoyed having Brian in our lives for this past year. Although we wish he had stayed with us a lot longer, we are glad that he did not suffer, and rather, was found cuddled with his little boy in their chinchilla house. He died peacefully in his sleep.
RIP Brian. Hopefully we'll see you on the other side.
