MISADVENTURES IN DATING
Dream Date, Nightmare Pet
It’s not you it’s them
You’ve found a wonderful person. You’re dating and everything is going great. Life is good, right? But wait. Have you met their pets yet? I’ve found that some crazy stuff can happen.
Callie’s Chinchilla
Callie didn’t have a name for it. She called it “the chinchilla.” I think she just enjoyed saying the word chinchilla.
We had seen a couple of them on a nature show hopping around Machu Picchu, but she had never mentioned wanting one. Nevertheless, she showed up one day at my door with a caged chinchilla and insisted that it stay at my place because her apartment mates wouldn’t want it there.
It wasn’t a great sales pitch but, knowing nothing about chinchillas, I agreed.
Chinchillas, I would learn, are fearful animals. That’s because just about everything eats them in the wild — skunks, bobcats, raptors, snakes, foxes, you name it. So, they’ve survived with all manner of defensive tactics, including spraying urine and leaping out of harm’s way. In fact, they’re the Michael Jordan of rodents. They can jump five or six feet high. For a little animal that’s insane. It’s like Jordan jumping thirty feet high.
