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myurbandreamso, i've been up since 4am tending to a pair of male 2-day-old baby chinchillas. their mother died after giving birth sometime before saturday morning, probably due to complications in birthing, and cait volunteered- or was volunteered by her boss, i'm not clear on those details- to take the little guys home and feed them every hour or two. one of them is a bit of a runt and hasn't been able to hold his head up since yesterday evening.
i have new and increasing sympathy for mothers of newborn babies. and human babies aren't born with teeth. and evaporated milk has possibly the most noxious smell of any non-fecal matter i've ever encountered. i think i'll be breast-feeding my children, thanks all the same.
it's a painstaking process, making kinky (the bigger boy) stop squirming long enough to eat, and then holding the little guy at the right angle and gently pulling his mouth open- he can manage swallowing, barely. we've been feeding them with a dropper, and kinky can generally take a good squirt of formula milk and lick it off his whiskers, but the littler one is taking one drop and one painful, hard-won swallow at a time. they're both napping in my lap- i found the little guy sleeping upside-down on his head earlier. *eyeroll*
after the 6am feeding kinky widdled on me. little rat. *glares* he likes sitting on my shoulder. i call him kinky because there's a little kink at the end of his tail. chinchillas look kinda fun- like some kind of rat-gerbil hybrid. they have gerbil-like fluffy tails and a huge puff of fur on their heads, it makes their skulls look two or three times the actual size, SO funny. they're big, though- these guys are literally newborns and they're bigger than adult mice, about the size of a small young rat, but fluffier. i don't doubt chinchillas have color morphs, but these two are a gorgeous salt-and-pepper coloring, with white on their bellies and tails. they have really long kangaroo-like back legs, though.
oops, it's 9am- time for food, little guys!!!!
EDIT: 10:55am. the little one's dead. i fed him at 10 and curled him up with his brother on the heat pad, and when i got out of the shower he wasn't breathing anymore. *sighs* his body curled up in my hand is still warm, and it almost seems like i could be mistaken, but one look at him and it's obvious he's not breathing. still....
i have new and increasing sympathy for mothers of newborn babies. and human babies aren't born with teeth. and evaporated milk has possibly the most noxious smell of any non-fecal matter i've ever encountered. i think i'll be breast-feeding my children, thanks all the same.
it's a painstaking process, making kinky (the bigger boy) stop squirming long enough to eat, and then holding the little guy at the right angle and gently pulling his mouth open- he can manage swallowing, barely. we've been feeding them with a dropper, and kinky can generally take a good squirt of formula milk and lick it off his whiskers, but the littler one is taking one drop and one painful, hard-won swallow at a time. they're both napping in my lap- i found the little guy sleeping upside-down on his head earlier. *eyeroll*
after the 6am feeding kinky widdled on me. little rat. *glares* he likes sitting on my shoulder. i call him kinky because there's a little kink at the end of his tail. chinchillas look kinda fun- like some kind of rat-gerbil hybrid. they have gerbil-like fluffy tails and a huge puff of fur on their heads, it makes their skulls look two or three times the actual size, SO funny. they're big, though- these guys are literally newborns and they're bigger than adult mice, about the size of a small young rat, but fluffier. i don't doubt chinchillas have color morphs, but these two are a gorgeous salt-and-pepper coloring, with white on their bellies and tails. they have really long kangaroo-like back legs, though.
oops, it's 9am- time for food, little guys!!!!
EDIT: 10:55am. the little one's dead. i fed him at 10 and curled him up with his brother on the heat pad, and when i got out of the shower he wasn't breathing anymore. *sighs* his body curled up in my hand is still warm, and it almost seems like i could be mistaken, but one look at him and it's obvious he's not breathing. still....
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Date: 2008-07-20 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 07:33 pm (UTC)