Dd has two chinchillas - a non-breeding pair: a large standard female and a small white male. She got them from someone off craigslist, bought a HUGE cage for them, and put them in the lr so they can be a part of the family. Chinchillas are high-energy and sensitive. They do NOT do change well at all, and the older they are the harder they take change. It has taken months, a lot of coaxing and a lot of gently but firmly establishing the rules but they are settling in and beginning to look a lot calmer and happier. I nearly sabotaged all that.
Somone else on craigslist was looking to rehome a pair of chinchillas. Like dd's they are a non-breeding pair. Both are the standard gray. Chinchillas are colony animals in the wild and the cage my dd's are in is certainly large enough for two more, so I called the guy and started negotiations for getting the two he was offering, never thinking the two who could hear me talking about this would have a clue. When dd got home that afternoon I talked to her about the possiblity of getting two more chins and she said she wanted to think about it.
I had another conversation with the guy wanting to rehome his chins and several more with dd. Finally, dd said that she believed that if we tried to move two more chins in her female would not do well. This female acts as if she has been abused in the past and my dd has worked hard with her to get her to calm down. To prove her point she pointed out how the chinchillas had been behaving the two days we had been discussing getting more chinchillas. She was right. They were both much quieter and seemed to be tense, waiting for something to happen.
Anyway, I called the guy back, appologized for taking up his time, but explained why I couldn't get the chinchillas. Later dd's two started getting pissy with each other - you know how it is when you live with someone - "You're in my basket!" "You ate my dandelion drop!" "Leave me alone, I'm sleeping!" I didn't want to listen to it so I told them not to fight, then, on a whim, I said something along the lines of "I don't want chinchillas to fight. I don't want Felicity, Angel - and then I just pulled two names out of the air - Fluffy and Bunny to fight."
At the names of the two "invisible chinchillas" the Felicity and Angel froze. I was watching them and was dumbfounded at their reaction. They appeared to totally get it that I was naming two more chinchillas. As I watched, they both slunk to separate corners of the cage and stayed quiety the rest of the afternoon. I couldn't believe it. They HAD understood what I was saying - everything from two more chinchillas to talking as if the new ones were due any minute. I laughed so hard!
When dd got home I told her the entire story, laughing my head off. Dd wans't very happy with me for scaring her chinchillas with threats of cage-mates they hadn't approved of, but I was so amazed at their comprehension I just kept laughing about it off and on the rest of the evening.
Chins learn fast, though. The next time I used the names "Fluffy and Bunny" just to see what they would do, they froze, listened and watched, but within a few minutes they gave almost visible shrugs and went back to what they were doing. My last experiment with saying "Fluffy and Bunny" got no response from them at all - they figured I'd had my fun but they weren't going to buy into it any more.
I am still marveling at their comprehension. Who woulda thunk?
