I have to buy a new lamp this weekend. Because Scooter chewed through the cord. From inside his cage.

No, I don't know how. The outlet is behind his cage, and the cord goes near the cage, but that's been true for months. In my recent cleaning frenzy, I moved some stuff around, but I'm very aware of the cord and I honestly thought that, if anything, it was even safer because the wheel would cover the only part of the cage the cord came near. Most of it goes under the cage; only a few inches come close to the bars.

But apparently that's enough. Earlier today the lamp didn't work, and I thought the bulb had burned out. A few minutes ago I automatically flipped the switch, and suddenly there were sparks and a popping sound. Expecting the worst, I moved the cage, looked at the cord, and saw that it had been neatly severed. Stupid rodent! I don't care so much about the lamp, but what if it had been on when he chewed it?

I'll have to find a place for the new lamp that will prevent this from happening again. Sigh.

I'm getting over a cold, which isn't too bad except for the raging sniffles. (I'm slowly working toward a Scooter-related point, really.) I seem to have reached an age where I don't get very sick as far as symptoms go; I just need a lot of sleep. It's possible that I'm generally sleep-deprived, and so being sick just makes that worse. That's actually more than possible. Anyway. So tonight, like last night, I crashed on the couch for several hours. Waking up periodically, just long enough to look at the clock and go, "Wow. I must be tired. I should get up and work on the recap." And then I'd fall asleep again. So I dozed from around 7 to 1 AM. And I'm still tired. It's freakish.

But upon really, really waking up, I noticed that Scooter's water bottle had leaked. Completely. I mean, usually it drips a little. But I filled it this morning, and it was empty, and the bedding under it was soaked. Poor soggy Scooter. I assumed that I hadn't tightened the cap enough or something. So I tidied up his cage and cleaned out the bedding and went to fill the water bottle. And then I realized what the problem was.

A certain rodent had decided to gnaw at the bottle. Which he's tried before, but this time he actually made an impact, in the form of a couple of little holes at the top of the water bottle. Which meant there was no vacuum in it, and that's why it dripped constantly and emptied out all over the bedding. Stupid rodent. Given that it was 1 AM, I couldn't do much about it. And the water bottle was useless; it dripped constantly now. So I tossed it, and then put some water in an old food bowl so that if Scooter was desperate, he'd survive the night, and put that in the cage.

His reaction to it was amusing. He sat up, leaned over into the bowl, and I guess dipped his nose into the water. And then, horrified, spent several minutes trying to shove his snout into anything so as to wipe off the water. I felt bad for him, but I also felt like it was his own fault for deciding to eat his water bottle instead of gnawing one of the dozen wooden objects in his cage that he could safely eat. Idiot.

So tomorrow I have to go buy him a new water bottle. And see if I can arrange it in a way that makes it hard for him to gnaw the top. I don't know why he decided that would be a fun thing to do. For two years this wasn't an issue, and suddenly he wants to chew through the water bottle.

Who's the most spoiled chinchilla in the world? Scooter is! Yes he is. Wooja wooja.

Er, sorry. Just to digress for a minute, I'm tired. I worked all weekend. Long days. Longer days than I work during the week. It was all quite tragic. And by Sunday I was so tired. Usually I don't get that tired unless it's at least for a fun reason, y'know? But this was just work. And (no, I am veering back toward the topic, honest) so Scooter had been neglected for a while. Because all week I was frantic about getting the recap done and preparing things for the weekend, and then I was gone all weekend, effectively. I'd come home and eat something and go to bed.

Today, to make up for all that, I went in a little late (10) and left early (4). I could have just taken the day off, but if I'd done that, I'd have slept all day and then I'd spend the rest of the week being off-kilter, so it seemed better to just suck it up. Right now it's just 10:30, but it feels like it must be 3 AM. So I'm going to bed early, and I hope that'll sort me out and I can function till next weekend.

Anyway, because I left early, I was home when the UPS man came by with my latest order from ChinWorld. (See, I said it'd be relevant eventually!) Yay. It was mostly food, but I also got another of the little perching platforms, and a "sleeping platform" -- same thing, but a couple square inches larger, so he can sit there more comfortably. That meant I could finally arrange the cage the way I wanted, and get rid of one of the awful "ladders" between levels in the cage.

And that motivated me to also clean out the cage, which I hadn't done in a week although I kept meaning to and falling asleep instead. Poor little neglected Scooter. So I had fun doing all that, and arranged things the way I've been wanting, and got to spend a while reminding Scooter that I exist. And he had fun hopping around and discovering the new stuff and working out different ways to get from place to place. Plus he got a long dust bath. Aw.

I removed the fiddlesticks temporarily. Partly because there's not a good place for them, and partly because damn it, I want him to sleep in his little wooden house. That's what it's for! Ungrateful rodent. So we'll see if he uses it when there's no option. If not, I'll toss it; it wasn't expensive, I just want to see him curled up in it once. Box o' fuzz!

I also got a brush for him. ChinWorld mentions that not all chins like being brushed, but I figured I'd take the chance. It's a soft wire bristle thing, so it should theoretically feel okay for him. I tried to use it, but he was too busy smelling the wooden handle and trying to eat it. At some point I just gave up and let him take it from me. Then he picked it up in his mouth and front paws (It's probably 4 inches long, total) and hopped around with it, trying to figure out where the best place to sit down and eat it would be. I think just watching that was worth the cost of the brush. Eventually I took it back, but he still tries to sniff, gnaw, and steal it every time I attempt to use the silly thing. I did manage to brush him a few times, but he'd usually squeak and move away. Which may mean he was just startled, or it may mean I was pressing too hard so it felt scratchy (I was trying not to, but I wondered about that) or it may mean he just doesn't like it. Futher expermintation is needed.

And I'd determined from my last order that 5 pounds of hay is too much. I was getting near the end of what I had, so I ordered more of that along with the food pellets. And the new batch was all fresh and green, which made me realize that the stuff I had was dry and faded and probably stale. I only got 2 pounds this time, which will still last a while, and I think that's probably as much as I can have without it going stale before Scooter eats it. I may also try storing it in a Tupperware container to see if that'll keep it fresh longer.

That's not a very interesting bit of information, I guess, but every once in a while I get email from someone who has a chin, or is thinking of getting one, so I thought I'd mention it for their benefit.

Along the same lines, since Scooter has a designated bathroom corner, I've started putting a litttle plastic tray in that area and filling it with bedding. The theory being, I can just pull it out, clean it, and refill it with fresh bedding, instead of having to clean the whole cage as often, or fuss with scooping up the peed-on bedding. It worked pretty well for a while, although because I went all this week without cleaning anything, Scooter eventually resorted to using a new corner. I'm hoping he'll get back to his usual habits now that everything's tidy again. I feel so bad that he felt the cage was too dirty! But I was so. Tired. You have no idea. My point is, if you have a chin and hate having to clean out the bedding all the time, you might try my little trick with a plastic tray. I'm helpful like that.

Hooray! The wheel arrived! Yahoo! And so on.

I had to go pick the package up from UPS, and while I really hoped it was the wheel, I figured it was probably the little house. But when I saw the giant package I knew the truth. That thing's big. Okay, I got the larger size, but it was still bigger than I expected. But light. The better to be silent. Oh yeah, baby.

So there was the usual frustration factor of actually attaching it to the cage, because the cage I'm using is apparently non-standard and it's not very interesting to go on about but it got a little annoying what with Scooter trying to hop in and sniff and chew everything and, well, y'know. But eventually it was attached, and I let Scooter go forth to test it out. First he ignored it, because now that I wasn't trying to shove him away so that I could fuss with it, where was the fun in trying to get at it? Grr.

Then he played with it for a while. He sat up at one end, grabbed it, and spun the thing. It was like he'd seen The Price is Right and was hoping to get into the Showcase Showdown. Finally he started experimentally hopping into it. It took a while -- I guess the surface is so smooth that it's a bit slippery, so he'd jump into it and slip and then hop out, scared. But finally he worked it out, hopped in and experimented with running. It was more of a trot at first.

The guy who invented that should get an award. Man. Yes, it really is silent. Okay, maybe it'll start to make noise at some point, but because the construction doesn't involve a frame and spokes, I'm not sure what there is that could start squeaking. The only noise Scooter made was the sound of the cage shaking a little, which happens no matter what. Oh, all right: and I could hear his feet going pit-pat on the wheel. I really doubt I'd be able to hear that from more than a few feet away, though. It was almost $100, and having seen it in action, I'm fine with that. Ah, quiet.

And now I can watch Farscape tonight without having to distract him from running. Run all you want, you little rodent! Hah! No more treats for you! Well, not for that. I'm sure I'll find other reasons.

Watching Scooter figure it out was fun, too. There's less friction when it turns, so he seemed startled by how quickly it would move, and how long it would keep rocking after he stopped. I thought I might get seasick watching him bob back and forth as it slowed down. The first few times he tried it, he'd stop it, uh, "manually" by leaning out and bracing his front paws on the fiddlesticks. Which is, duh, pretty cute.

I think I've established (to myself at least) that Scooter learns pretty quickly. So now I'm starting to wonder if I'm teaching him all the wrong things.

Not all, I guess. But some.

See, Fridays at 10 I watch Farscape. Which means that for an hour, I'd like it if Scooter wouldn't run in his wheel. Because it makes noise and it's hard to hear the TV over that. So if he's awake then, which he usually is, I try to distract him. Tonight I cleaned out his cage, and refilled the bowls with food & hay (er, I do that more than once I week, of course) and then Farscape started. And as usual, I had some treats and things ready so I could distract him from the wheel.

The first fun thing was that I played tug-o-war with him over the cuttlebone. I just shoved part of it through the bars, and he kept trying to pull it away, and got really frustrated because he couldn't just pick it up and throw it onto the bottom of the cage. Which is what he always does with it, for reasons I don't understand. I think it's part of the constant effort to make sure the gravity is working. Anyway. Then I broke off a small piece so he could hold it and chew away, and that went over well. And then he started to use the wheel, and I had to offer him a couple of treats so he'd come sit quietly and eat. I did hit on one brilliant idea.

I got this Petromalt stuff, it's a hairball remedy. With malt flavor! Mmm, I guess. Anyway, I just give him a teeny bit every few days, because it's for much larger animals. Much to my surprise, he really likes the stuff, and normally I just put a little on my finger (it's like paste) and he nibbles it off. Usually without biting my finger accidentally, which I appreciate. So my brilliant idea was to put some of it on the edge of the cuttlebone piece. And then I wedged it into the bars so he couldn't pick it up. The end result was that it took him a while to get all the Petromalt off, and he also went into some entertaining contortions to get at it.

I finally gave up for the last act of the show. Plus, it was about that time that I wondered if he might start to realize that if he got in the wheel he'd get a treat. I don't think he remembers that lesson from week to week, but he'll learn something at least temporarilly after just a couple of repititions. So in the course of an hour of television he probably would notice: "Huh, every time I get in the wheel, she calls me over for a treat. Score!"

Scooter got new toys. And... stuff. I'd ordered from ChinWorld and it seems like anyone with a chinchilla and a computer would already know about them, but I'm happy to give them a plug anyway. I ordered the stuff on 6/15, and it would have arrived on Monday but I always miss the UPS guy. And it was coming from California, so that seems pretty prompt to me.

I ordered some food pellets, which I wasn't going to do, but their prices are so, so much cheaper than at my local pet store. I threw some of it in with his old food, because like a lot of animals they can be fussy when their food gets changed. Hopefully he won't notice. I'm having trouble believing that one brand of little processed food pellets will taste that different from another, but we'll see.

And I got hay cubes, too, which were very cool. I'd been getting the loose hay, and that stuff is such a pain. Because the bags are overstuffed, so while they're technically resealable, you have to take out a lot of hay before that's feasible. And the stuff falls out of the bag when you pull it out, and then it falls out of the cage, and it clogs up the vacuum, and it's just a pain. So these cubes seemed promising: it's just pressed into little one-inch cubes. I gave Scooter one and he started gnawing at it, but they're kind of unwieldy that way. However, you can break them up very easily into more manageable bits. And it's still not the mess that the loose hay is. I'm so sold on this stuff. Okay, the one down side is I think the little hay-rack type thing I have is now useless. You could put the cubes in there, but Scooter wouldn't be able to pull them out, and if you break them up, they'll fall out of the rack. But it was cheap, so I'm not concerned about tossing it.

And they sent me a free sample of "Nibble Rings." More food. Scooter didn't seem to like the one I gave him, but again, that may just be because he's not used to them.

I also ordered a couple of cuttlebones. Dude, chinchillas have the strangest supplies. It's a very brittle shell. Yes, it's another thing to chew. Plus they're full of calcium and that's good for him. It's actually a few inches long, but it's very light, and breaks pretty easily. I just put the whole thing in to see what he'd do, and that was fun. Because it's large enough that it's kind of hard for him to handle it, but it's light enough that he can hold it up in his front paws and gnaw on it. Which is, needless to say, quite cute. He really liked that.

And as if that weren't enough chewing action, I got a couple of little perches. Not fish. They're little blocks of wood with bolts, so you can fix them onto the cage wherever you want. I got two, and I'll probably order a couple more so that I can get rid of one of the damn ramps. I really don't like those ramps. You can only arrange the levels in one way if you use them, because they pretty much determine how far apart you set the levels. Plus I just don't like that they aren't solid. Scooter doesn't seem to mind, but that also makes them lighter so when he hops around on them they rattle and, well, they're just annoying. The two perches I have now, I set up so that he could hop from one to the next and then into his house, which is now hanging up high again.

And, as I mentioned, they're wood, so he can chew them. A large portion of my life seems to be dedicated to finding things for a rodent to gnaw. That's a little depressing when I think about it. So I'm gonna stop thinking about it now. The brilliant part of this is that Scooter will sit on one, then lean down and gnaw at it. It seems like that wouldn't be very adaptive. I keep picturing Wile E. Coyote scenarios, where he'll gnaw through the perch and tumble down. I guess that would take a while, though.

Of course, the fun part of all this was setting it all up. I tried rearranging the levels a little, and my comments about the ramps can tell you how well that went. It's a little better, but there wasn't too much I could do. Then I spent a while figuring out where to put the perches and the house so that he could get to everything, and it took a little while. Plus Scooter kept getting in the way, and well, yeah. It got frustrating, but I finally got it pretty well arranged, I think.

Then Scooter got to run around and find all the new things and check out the perches and bounce around. And he got a bath, whee. It's neat to watch him discover where everything is, and get more and more confident about hopping up onto different things from further away. Plus he started working out strange routes to things that involve jumping instead of walking. Um. I'm having a really hard time explaining that without diagrams. Basically, instead of walking up a ramp that goes directly to where he wants to be, he'll hop onto something that's in the wrong direction but higher up, because from there he can hop to the top of the ramp. It's a longer distance to travel, but he can cover it faster. Yeah. I think that actually made sense.

I don't think I'm just ascribing intent when he was actually hopping around at random, because he did that to get up to where I was offering him a treat.

The exercise wheel didn't come with this order (I'd ordered it at a different time, and I can believe that it might take a little longer since I think the actual manufacturer is overseas or something). And I'd ordered a little "chin box" -- just a wooden house he can sleep in or whatever. It's all wood, with no nails or screws, so he can also eat it all up. Yum. I figured, if he has that, I can change the fiddlestick thing -- right now it's sort of an arch, and he'll sleep under it. So I'll replace that as his sleeping quarters with the box, and then I can use the fiddlesticks (man, I feel dopey typing that word out) to make a ramp or something.

No, taking it all back now: Scooter's a dope. His new hobby is biting the wire that holds the water bottle on the cage. Which would be dumb anyway, but in the process of pulling at the wire, he sometimes manages to pull it completely off the cage. At which point the bottle falls to the floor.

I yell at him when I catch him at it, and he seemed to stop doing it for a while, but now he's back at it again. About a week ago I came home, puttered about, and at some point noticed that the water bottle wasn't on the cage. Figuring that he might have been without water all day (idiot!) I held it up to the cage, and he immediately ran over and started chugging. So I assume he'd managed to dehydrate himself a bit. Dumb, dumb rodent.

After that, I moved the bottle so it was at an upper shelf, instead of the bottom of the cage. But then I cleaned out the cage and remembered why I'd kept it at the bottom. This is the best of three (!) bottles I've gotten, because it doesn't leak very much at all. But it does still drip a little because if it didn't, it wouldn't be much use as a water bottle. And Scooter leaves droppings all over his cage, which are normally tidy little dry pellets. Unless water has leaked out onto them -- then they're really gross. Ugh. So yesterday I moved the bottle back to the bottom, where it just drips onto the bedding.

And already he's started pulling at the wire again. Sigh. I just looked up and saw that he'd once again climbed up so that his back was resting on the wheel, and was tugging the wire. I said "Scooter!" and he jumped down, but I'm not always here to catch him at it. Maybe I'll move the shelf down so there's less room for him to climb up to the wires, and see if that stops him.

I know there are bottles that effectively bolt onto the cage, although I'm not sure they're designed for the cage I have. I probably could find one that is, though. I just hate to get a new bottle when this one is so nice and easy to use, plus then I'll have to unbolt the stupid thing to fill it. I think I'll take pliers to the ends of the wire, so it doesn't slip off the cage as easily. I can still slide the bottle out that way.

Stupid rodent.

Last night Johanna and Katie came over, and Scooter went a-roaming for our entertainment. There was much "aw"ing. He kept trying to eat Katie's feet, for reasons we have yet to determine. The highlight was that at some point, I leaned down and called to him. Normally this gets no reaction whatsoever from the rodent. This time, he scampered across the floor and then hopped up into my lap. Which wasn't at all what I expected, so of course I started, and he jumped down and ran away. Oops. Sorry, Scooter. But I didn't expect him to hop up towards my face! Maybe he was trying to rip my throat out. It's hard to remain calm in the face of that kind of threat. Then I felt bad for discouraging utterly adorable behavior. Oh well.

Since I was sitting in the chair by his cage, my guess was that the hop up meant he was ready to go home, so I pulled out the dustbath tray, he hopped in, and I returned him to his cage. And I gave him treats and a toilet-paper-roll to chew, to make up for being terrified of him before. Poor little guy.

Scooter is smart. Shut up. Actually, I'm going to disprove that statement almost immediately. See, there are these sticks that I wedge into his cage in various ways to make fun things to climb and chew. And if Scooter would chew them in the middle, it'd work out fine. But no; he's taken to gnawing at the ends. There's one stick that he's pulled out of the bars I've stuck it into a few times, so that he can eat it more effectively. This, obviously, makes the sticks slightly shorter, so that they no longer can be fixed in place the same way.

So a few days ago I was cleaning his cage, and pulled everything out, and had a hell of a time trying to create the traditional "perches" for him because of this problem. I worked something out eventually, but I guess it's not as good as it used to be. Because there was one place where two sticks meet where Scooter used to sit, and he doesn't do that now. I think the sticks aren't meeting at the right angle to make a good seat for him anymore. This would be so much easier with visuals, I know; you'll just have to trust me. Anyway, this made me a little bit sad, because I think it's cute when Scooter perches on his little sticks and stares out at the world. Sure, I think it's cute when he does anything, but that's not the point.

Since my cuteness quota wasn't being met, I had to take action. I tried to lure Scooter up onto his old perch, using raisins as bait. It took a while; I had to get his attention, and then move the raisin so that it was over the cage in such a way that he'd have to climb onto the sticks to get close to it. I think he got a little confused; he tried stretching up toward the top of the cage, and then I'd say, "No, no, get on the stick!" and it as frustrating for us both. Finally, though, he hopped up, and I gave him a raising, and he immediately hopped back down to one of the shelves to eat it.

A marginal success, at best.

Feeling determined, I pulled out another treat and held it in the same place. This time he understood, and hopped back onto the sticks, snagged the disturbingly bright green pellet, and stayed on his perch to eat it. Yeay! I figured that was enough treats for one evening, and went off to do whatever the hell else it is I do to entertain myself.

The next night, I figured I needed to reinforce the perching behavior if I really wanted him to do it on his own. So I pulled out the treat box, picked out something yummy, and readied myself for another test of my patience, since I assumed I'd have to do the whole, "No, no -- just sit on the stick!" thing again. But no! I held up the treat and Scooter immediately jumped onto the Perch of Cuteness. So smart! Wow!

While some friends were over last night, I let Scooter out to show off his cute-itude. He discovered a new place to explore: usually I'm sitting at the computer while he runs around, but since I wasn't this time, he was able to hop onto the chair, and from that onto the table I use as a desk. So he sniffed around up there for a while, and then just posed nicely so we could admire him. Johanna said he was trying to find some way to communicate with us, because first he was sniffing the keyboard, and then he picked up a pen cap. And then he tried to eat the pen cap, which I think disproves the communication theory.