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Escapes |
Shelter KitsI work as a volunteer at an animal shelter, and sometimes things happen that really make me sad. This is one of those cases when I felt just awful. We had a chinchilla family in one of our enclosures. These enclosures were originally meant for dogs, but in order to accommodate small animals too the enclosures are fitted with a very narrow wire mesh. Right next to the chinchillas was an enclosure with three cats. Normally no problem since there is no way the cats can harm other smaller animals. When I started work on that particular Sunday morning, feeding the cats first, I all of a sudden noticed that there was something unusual lying on the floor in the cats' enclosure. First I thought it was a dead mouse, but when I was about to pick it up to throw it away, I took a closer look and noticed it was the hind leg of some animal, but certainly not the leg of a mouse. The leg was much too big for that. I just could not figure out what it was, and after quite a while, I finally had this horrifying thought that this might be the chinchilla baby from the neighbouring enclosure. I desperately searched the chinchilla box, but could not find the baby there anymore, so my dreadful feeling was proved true. I checked the chinchilla box over and over again, to find out how the chinchilla baby could have escaped. I came to the conclusion that it must have squeezed itself through a very narrow gap between wire mesh and partition wall, and therefore went straight into the claws of three cats which were doubtlessly waiting for it eagerly. Unquote |
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