I am baby-sitting my granddaughter’s chinchilla while she is on a mission for our church. She’s out there talking to people about the meaning of life and living and the point of it all. (Zoe, the granddaughter, not the chinchilla.)
She’s having a ball. (Zoe, the granddaughter, not the chinchilla who is also a girl.)
Actually, the chinchilla is also having a ball. Literally. She has a big plastic ball that she rolls around inside. She also has a dust bath, three-story cage, big wheel, wooden house, assorted toys, hunks of volcanic stone to sharpen her teeth on, and a human slave—me.
The chinchilla’s name is Chee-Chee.
Chee-Chee does a good impression of being a grumpy teenager. Once in a while, she enjoys a good chin rub.
Mostly she is not in the mood and barks, jumps, and threatens with her tiny teeth. Everyone is terrified of her.
Chinchillas eat copious amounts of timothy pellets or chinchilla chow, actual timothy hay, the bark off of teething sticks, and various nuts and seeds. NOTE: Chee-Chee digs raisins also terrorizing humans.
Recently (a time not so far in the past so recently) Chee-Chee and I got in a fist fight.
I shuffled to her cage with a plastic scoop filled with chinchilla pellets. Chee-Chee the chinchilla, in a show of grumpy dominance raced over, grabbed the edge of the plastic scoop with her tiny chinchilla hands, and started yanking the scoop out of my hand.
We commenced wrestling. She yanked. I pulled. She yanked harder. Chinchilla chow dribbled from the side of the scoop. She put her back into it.
“Let go of that!” I yelled.
We wrestled on.
Absurdity mixed with indignation. This dang creature weighs nothing under all that fur and she was winning. I started to laugh.
“I mean it,” I spluttered, “you cannot win.” Laughing turned to bigger laughing and a bit of hysterical chortling.
And that made me pee my pants.
And that made me laugh harder, also pee harder.
What?
Urinating is often used in the animal kingdom as a form of self-defense in dangerous or tense situations. Toads pee on kids when they pick them up all the time; everyone knows it.
It felt like I was wrestling that mammal for my life.
Therefore . . . I’m a toad. I’m a toad attacked by a chinchilla that defended itself in a time honored, natural way.
What did I learn? I learned that to feed Chee-Chee I need to wait until her back is turned and sneak the food into her cage.
I am a toad who can be taught.
Linda (Tinkle Time) Zern
