Accidents

I had two male chinchillas who I adored, Pepe and Chico. My fiance and I felt that they needed a larger cage, so we set about constructing an aviary type cage, made with a thick wooden frame and mesh wiring. It was the height of the ceiling (8ft) was 6ft long and 4ft wide, I was really happy about giving my two pride and joys such a marvelous cage.

It had various platforms in it at all different heights that they could jump around on and a tree for climbing, on the bottom level there was an internal section where I used to have an in built wardrobe, but had removed the doors. In this In the internal section we had built a false step, to ensure they would not urinate on the wooden floor boards. The step served as just another level for them to play on.

Every night we got very little sleep, because the boys chewed continuously at their many wooden toys, however unknown to myself or my fiance, Chico had actually chewed a hole in the false step. We found this out one morning when we got up and could only see Pepe. We went inside the cage, only to discover that Chico had chewed a hole on the step and had tried to get his head inside, had obviously got stuck and had broken his neck.

I was so shocked, hurt, very sad for Pepe and hurting very badly myself.

I could not believe that I had spent weeks building this cage that would kill one of my precious chinchillas. I was furious that I did not see this danger and very sad that poor Pepe was left without his companion.

e-mail 15th July 2001