In my previous post, I talked about how I was getting a chinchilla for my birthday. Well, today I finally got her. Meet Diamond, the newest member of our family!



She's a gorgeous gray and white female, if that wasn't obvious. She has a very calm and gentle personality from what I've seen of her, but she's quite playful, too. I know I said that I was probably going to get a black chinchilla, but, well... there's a funny story about that. When we were buying the supplies on Monday, the chinchilla was gone. Yeah, someone just happened to buy it between Saturday and then. So we had to wait for them to get in more, and they said that the breeder was probably going to deliver some on either Tuesday or Wednesday. They had chinchillas at other pet stores, sure, but we trusted this one the most. They got their chinchillas from a local breeder, since they were a little family run store. We went to Pet Smart to look at the chinchillas, and we happened to ask an employee how old they were. They said they had gotten them from a warehouse, and they had no idea how old they were. That's real nice. The workers at this little pet shop knew exactly how old they were: this new batch they had gotten in were born on Easter. And they told us all about their breeder, and she sounded like she really cared about her chinchillas.
The new batch contained three young chinchillas: a calm, dark brown male, a crazy, hyper, white female, and Diamond. I liked Diamond from the start... she's really pretty. I got to hold her, and I decided right away that I wanted her. And what a great choice she was.
At first we couldn't think of what to name her. My mom kept insisting that we name her something in Spanish, since chinchillas are native to South America. We eventually settled on Diamond, for a couple of reasons. She was born in April, so naturally her birthstone is the diamond. And her fur seemed to glisten, so I thought it'd be a cute name.
Diamond loves to rest under her wheel and inside a segment of a cream soda box my mom put in her cage. She also enjoys being held. She doesn't really like being picked up, but once you've got her, she snuggles right up to you. Unless something excites her, that is. Then she'll start crawling up your shoulder.
While Diamond's cage is in the living room, we take her out to hop around in my room, which is now spotless. She seems to have a fascination with my closet... A few hours ago, she got into a bit of mischief. When we were letting her walk around, she hopped over to the gap between my desk and my dresser. My dresser is in the corner of my room, but it's not evenly set against the wall. There's a small space between the side of the dresser and the wall, and a bigger one between the back and the wall. On the other side of the dresser is a small set of plastic drawers. Well, when Diamond went over there, I tried to grab her, but it didn't work. She ended up hopping right into the space between the side of the dresser and the wall... perfect. I couldn't reach her from where she was, and she didn't seem to want to get out. So I called in my mom. After a few minutes of trying to lure her out, my mom started to move the dresser, and Diamond got startled. She ran to the back, and began to dash for the other side. She readily let me pick her up, and we carried her back to her cage. She enthusiastically hopped right back in. I'm glad she recognizes that that's her home, and she's safe there. We rewarded her with a raisin, which she happily ate up.
Diamond's a really great chinchilla. I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to tell about her in the future!