Earlier this year, my daughter's small lizard and her oldest hamster both died on the same day. The hamster lived a full little hamster life - about three years, probably one of the more active pet hamster lives. She escaped from her cage numerous times, always to show up either hours or days later in one of two places - either back by her cage poking her nose around, or under the kitchen cupboards. Sindee was a fun sweet hamster.
Goggles the crested gecko was super awesome. About 3 inches long, he chased around crickets, ate mealworms, and jumped around a lot. We only had him for 6 months, and he died of unknown causes.
My daughter wanted to get a new pet, but since we were going to be travelling a lot earlier this year, I convinced her that we should wait until we'd be home for a while. We went to the pet store, thinking that we'd be looking for a new lizard. The pet store that we stopped at didn't have any lizards that we liked, but it had a chinchilla that caught our attention.
Over the next hour, we sat in a room with the chinchilla and held it for awhile. Her handler said that she was the sweetest chinchilla that the handler had ever met. I knew next to nothing about chinchillas, but I could see what she meant. The chinchilla had the cutest habit of very lightly nibbling on our fingertips and then licking our fingertips. We were just getting ready to buy supplies to be able to buy/adopt the chinchilla, when the power went out at the pet store. So we had to go home alone. The next day, we brought Cloud home to Malibu.
One of the supplies I bought was an outdoor playyard. The handler said that I should get the lid just in case Cloud could figure out how to get out of the top of the playyard (over 3 feet tall). So over the next several weeks, every time we put cloud in the outdoor playyard, I put the lid on. I couldn't see that Cloud had any ability to get out of the top of the playyard, so one day a couple of weeks ago, I told my daughter that we should leave the lid off so Cloud could feel less cooped up for a few minutes. My daughter wanted to put the lid on, but I convinced her to leave it off.
I went inside for a few minutes, and then my daughter went inside. A few minutes later, I heard her yell "Where's Cloud?" I ran out, and the chinchilla wasn't in the playyard. We looked around for an hour before I took a break. Then we put a few signs up in our neighborhood incase it wandered into a neighbor's hard. (I was really hoping it didn't end up wandering into the street). We looked again several more times that night and again the next morning.
That next day when we came home from work and school, we looked around our yard one more time and couldn't find her. I had even put her dust bath outside our patio door, hoping to entice her back towards the house.
Slightly after, I was talking on the phone with John and noticed that the water in our pool was pretty low, and I absentmindedly thought that I should go turn the pool water on when I noticed a gray shadow at the end. I focused, and realized it was Cloud in the pool. I screamed, John said he'd be right home, and I ran out to scoop Cloud out of the water. I couldn't see or feel her breathing, so I started giving her CPR. My daughter had heard my scream, so she knew what was happening. I had her bring a phone to me so that I could call a vet. The vet told me to keep trying CPR and to try to get the water out of Cloud's mouth and lungs. After hesitating for a couple of seconds, I even tried mouth to mouth, but it was just too late.
My daughter and I sobbed for hours that night, and the next morning we buried Cloud in a beautiful shady spot in our backyard.
Ever since I was a teenager, I've been abnormally afraid of drowning. I used to have lots of nightmares about dying in water. The first two nights after Cloud died, I had nightmares again, and I've had a few more since.
That week, we went to see a different chinchilla. He wasn't as adorably sweet as Cloud, but he was gentle, and he liked to be held, so we decided to bring him home with us that night. Needless to say, he'll never get to play outside without being enclosed under the playyard lid. He's sweet, and he's really fast, so he was aptly named Speedy.
I still feel guilty and sick about doing something so stupid to let Cloud escape. I'm an animal lover to a fault. I feel guilty going to even the zoos that try to simulate natural habitats. I love caring for animals, but I feel guilty about them not being free in nature. I know that I was trying to let Cloud feel more free, but not watching over her was a stupid mistake that I'll never forget. Speedy will never take her place, but he's a member of our little animal family just the same.
