Mother Nurture

This past friday, I went to The Theatre to take advantage our our secure WiFi connection to check email, read blogs and whatnot, and then we in the office started talking about small animals, due to Munsen's recent purchase/adoption of her sidekick and something came over me- I think it was a big ol' nurturing feeling. I wanted so to adopt a li'l guy to take care of, have responsibility for, and reap any such benefits that that entails, so I looked up Chinchilla in Wikipedia and just fell for the big ears and squirrel-like tail.

After leaving the Theatre, I went on over to PetCo and looked around at all the small pets they had- ferrets (cute but bitey and v. curious), hamsters (cute, small, and not so smart), mice (meh), rats (ick), birds (pretty but not too interactive), fish (can't pet them), guinea pigs (almost there) and then over to the chinchilla container. They were out and awaiting some more but the price tag totally took ahold of me- $140 for a freakin' rodent?!? I wasn't too aware of their longevity, intelligence, or size (much bigger than a hamster) at that point, so I looked at the guinea pigs again and kept coming back. They were too adorable, big, they liked to be held, run around, etc. Then I got into a little bit of a "more than I can chew" panic so I called up my dear friend Kiwi in GA left a message ("I'm at the pet store and am thinking of taking home a guinea pig. Please call me back ASAP because I have many questions")- she's been a pig owner for a few years. After wandering around the pet store for a litte while longer I drove home empty-handed (thankfully). I got the return call from Kiwi as soon as I drove into my driveway and we talked for a bit about the pluses and minuses of guinea pigs and I felt much better about not making a rash purchase and decided that I'd check the pounds over the weekend just to see what they had.

"Guinea Pigs? Isn't this about Chinchillas?" you must be wondering. Well, keep reading.

Saturday and most of Sunday passed by and then I went over to Munsen's place to continue watching season 2 of "The L Word" and we got to surfing over to the Arlington Animal Welfare site to see if they might have any Chinchillas. They didn't but I found out that the adoption fee is $80- not cheap, but cheaper than buying one at a pet store/breeder and there's an added bonus of actually rescuing an animal that needed a home. So no-go in Arlington, so on the way to work Monday morning, I remembered that I work near the Shelter in Alexandria, so I looked at their site and, lo and behold, they had 3(!) available. After work, I hightailed it over there and found out they actually had 4 turned in, but the 2 boys had already been adopted and the 2 girls still there were on hold for a family to visit them at the shelter before the home visit could be scheduled and they would be adopted. They answered most of the questions I had about the animal and the procedure for adopting through Alexandria and how much it would cost ($50 for the pair- bonus!). I filled out the application, turned it in and got on the waiting list, asking to be notified if the family showed up and I was out of the running. Well, I never heard back, so I called them yesterday and it turned out that the family came and the home visit was scheduled for today. I asked what the chances of that failing would be and they said it's was fairly minimal, but it does happen, so they said they were going to notify me Thursday if that, indeed fall through. I'm not holding my breath, but just in case, I found another pair through petfinder.com in Frederick, MD, that were being fostered and notified them about it.

I'm still hopeful I'll have a couple li'l critters running around and keep ya'll posted. And, come on, aren't those pictures too cute? Plus they look so much like Totoro- from one of my favorite movies ever "My Neighbor Totoro."