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[shadowborne]

Alright this is a new problem and I hope someone might be able to help with suggestions. My chinchilla, silver, was out for her bi daily run and when we turned around to move something we noticed she was gone. All doors closed but we have moved everything out of the room so suspicion leads me to believe she may have left the room. Anyone have suggestions for drawing them out? I worry about her because we also have a cat in the house but he is with and has been the whole time. Please, I am desperate as it happened about 10 minutes ago and she isn't responding to anything we do. Yes, we moved everything in the room looking but still no luck.

Please please please any suggestions would work, anything. It's not to hot in the home, it's just at 75 to 76 everywhere but I worry about her having water and such.

Thank you and I will check often.

[QTPie61282]

Thats tough.  where in your house is the chin room? Upstairs, downstairs, basement?

You can always follow the cat around, cats are very keen with their hearing and might just lead you to her. even if she is behind a wall or in a duct somewhere, the cat will hear her walking around and will look very interested when it hears something.

Try that, leave out food and water in the room for her incase she comes out.  You can try that and close the door, and check back to see if anything is eaten. or try putting raisens in a pile on the floor to see if shes eaten them.  Then you will know shes still in the room.
 Keep us posted

[shadowborne]

Alright after 4 hours we found her, got her back into her cage. It's now 2 hours later and she is acting very very strange. If we get near the front of the cage she will actually attack our hands near her. Can anyone explain this? Do we cover her cage completely so she has time to calm down or something? She makes no noises at us but will actually try to bite our hand through her bars.

Thank you


Alright add-on. My father, who doens't care if she bites through his hand, put his hand in her cage and she climbed up his arm and refuses to go back into her cage, he got her back in by lure with a treat but she does not want to be in that cage. Suggestions?

Another note. We keep her in the basement, it's a finished basement with bedrooms, and it is where all 3 of us are most of our time home. We found her under a drawer that she got back to, luckily without biting any of the high power cables we had behind. How she got behind is still a mystery as we closed off 99% of it and no way to scoot up the wall to get in.

[QTPie61282]

Weird.  She might have loved her taste of freedom and just wants to be out of the cage.  She might be biting you to let you know she hates it in there right now and wants out.

If this is the case, the more you put your hand in there, or your dad to take her out,  you are only reinforcing this behavior.  She will know that biting and making a fuss will get you guys to open her door and shell have another chance to run.  Chins are smart.
I would leave her be for the day and check on her before bed or feeding time.
She might be better tomorrow and back to normal in a few days.



Did you check her out to make sure she wasnt physically hurt anywhere on her body?

[shadowborne]

Yea I did, she looked fine with no missing fur, no blood, she was just acting like that. She calmed down a bit and started actually calling for us as we went to put back the rest of the house. When we came down she didn't act like that any more but was sitting next to her wheel making a noise I have associated with "I want attention please". She then let us actually get close to her and she let us touch her without the biting but she still wanted out so I let her out in the room I know is 100% chin proof, just book shelves and books in it :-). Had to cool it off first but after about 30 minutes of running around and exploring she fell asleep in her carrier, the way we get her upstairs.

[chinclub]

Maybe she jumped over the dresser.  Remember chinchillas can just as high as 7 feet in the air. I've seen my chinchillas jump up onto my 5 ft tall dresser no problem.  They don't have those kangaroo feet for nothing! 

[shadowborne]

Oh goody, then she will start getting into more stuff. We blocked everything off that is easily accessed from computer table height. Hmm, this should prove interesting in the future, luckily we plan to alter many rooms so she can run free without a cat problem or getting into cable problems. :-)

[Jo Ann]

 
    The first "Chin's Out" taught us well ... We "found" our first chin to get loose, in the top drawer of the filing desk ... I heard her having fun chewing up the paperwork in it, or who knows how long she would have been out.       She crawled up under it, then did the "spider-man" thing and scooted up the back side of the drawers until she reached the top one ... which had bunches of papers to nibble.

    Also, be aware that they can learn to unlock their cages with the normal latches ... they just pull back and up and "pop" it open.  We had one chin so proud of being able to do this ... she definitely showed us while we were looking straight at her.   

     Then, there are the other pets that help your chins get out.  Lady, our Great Dane, would get lonely when we went shopping, so she would open one of the cages, let the chins in that cage out to play with her while we were gone.  When we came home, she would take us to the open cage, then to where the chin/chins were hiding.  She did this for almost 3 months before we caught on to what was going on.  One of the pairs started fussing when we put them back in, Lady went over to try to calm them.  They just kept fussing ... I guess Lady understood what they were saying, because she opened the door for them!   

      They are smart and ingenious at getting out and at finding places to hide.  Please make sure you do not let your little one play in areas/rooms with cedar, cherry or many of the "hard woods" furniture.  They will chew on anything, regardless if it is good for them or not.

   Welcome to the "Chin-Hunt" side of chinchillas!

   Jo Ann

[Debbie.nl.ca]

Oh my the memories flooding back.
I haven't missplaced one in years.
Well sometimes they can hide even in their room, but I know they can't get out of it.
My first rush was in the car. I should have known he couldn't get out. but I still paniced.

[chinclub]

Most of ya'll remember the story of my chinchilla that climbed a 7 ft ladder and hid in the chinchilla building loft.  It took for forever to figure out where he was and another decade to catch the little booger.  He did that three or four times till I finally managed to keep him in his cage.  He would rock back and forth on the pan till it slid out far enough for him to squeeze out!!

Chinchillas are masters at getting into trouble!

[Jenova]

Chinchillas are awesome. 
Cheech makes a habit of choosing one bit of furniture while he's out and spends his half an hour trying everything to get under it. He has squeezed sideways through the tiniest gap to get under the bed and I really thought I would hurt him if I pulled him out so I had to let him get all the way through. I tempted him out with his treat box, because he knows the sound of it. The next time he didn't fall for that and I had to wait for him to come out of his own accord.
The other thing he's learned to do it pull the boards away from the bed to get under a different way. He's persistent to the point I feel bad stopping him.
He's not been as adventurous as yours, but hopefully he'll have many more years to get into sillier places. 

[neeley]

One of the most memorable times with Chewy was a few months ago when I waited 5 hours for him to come out of my daughter's closet.  I had let him out to run and forgot about her closet door being slightly open.  Well of course, he quickly noticed it and was gone in a flash.  If any of you have a 18 yr old daughter, or even a teenager, you can imagine what her closet looked like.  To give you a visual, the only floor space you could see was about 12 inches into the closet !!!   Chewy had a blast exploring and hiding from me until nearly 2am.     I had placed small bits of papaya  just inside the door and leading out of the door far enough were I could close it, and I layed on the bed waiting and waiting. When I dozed off, he ate the papaya in the closet, but did dare not come out to get the rest.  After realizing I was no longer looking for him and had fallen asleep he prceeded to "bark" as loud as he could about 6 times causing me to sit straight up in bed, startled.  I looked in the closet and there he was sitting on a shelf, just grinning.      I sure miss the little guy.  But what wonderful memories.

[Debbie.nl.ca]

This is good spot to tell ye this one.
My hubby was at the hardwear store and ran into a customer of mine.
He asked how her chin was doing and she said, she let it out in the back yard for a run and it got away.
It was a good thing it wasn't me she ran into.

[Jo Ann]

    How did you keep from strangeling her?   
Not literally, but at least verbally!   

Jo Ann

[Jenova]

How stupid can somone be?!