Aww! I hope she got out Karyn. Poor little thing :)

~Tina

Shouldn't those guys be headed South by now???? Ours are! Close the door and put a feeder up!!! You Love Pets!!!!

Kylie

Kylie I want to get rid of some of the animals!!!! I had just given away 2 baby chinchillas and somehow Cinders gave birth to two more a couple weeks ago. All my chins are separated by sex and haven't been together in at least 6 months. I have no idea how Cinders got pregnant. I'm calling them my immaculate conception babies. DD got a small aquarium from a friend for her bday last week and then she snuck a hamster in the other day. Kyle comes running upstairs saying that Madi has a mouse in her room and I told him to stop making up stories. I went in her room to get laundry and there was a freaking Roborovski Hamster!!!! Chinchillas, cats, sugar gliders, rabbit, dog, fish, gecko, hamster..... NO HUMMING BIRDS!!!!!!!

Oh Man, if I lived closer, I'd adopt a chinchilla! :D I love them! Already had fresh and saltwater fish tanks, a few rabbits, cats, an iguana, two hamsters, a parakeet, a breeding pair of cockatiels and currently two dogs. Oh, Horses over the years as well.

LoL Almost had a turtle in the house today. My daughter Cheyenne came home with a painted turtle, wanted to keep it. I had to research online and show her we couldn't provide a large enough living space for it before I could convince her to release it again. :) With the promise that eventually, she would be getting a turtle. I am so stuck for that one! She's wanted one for a long time. I'm going to try and find one that doesn't require water aquarium living spaces though. Some sort of land type.

~Tina

I wish you lived closer too! I'm back up to 9 chins and only want to keep 4. Speaking of turtles I found this guy in the garden the other day.
{{gwi:567414}}
Box turtles and Red Eared Sliders are common here. A tortoise would make a good pet.

I had marine tanks for years but found it impossible to continue the upkeep once I had kids. They are beautiful but so time consuming. Back then there weren't a lot of companies that provided home maintenance like there is now. If I could have found one I'd have kept them.

I've had parakeets, cockatiels and most recently a lovebird. Sunny was a lutino and so pretty. She developed a cancerous tumor on her wing that grew incredibly fast. My vet said that even amputation of her wing was futile and she died about 3 months after the tumor was discovered.

Oh Karyn, Lovebirds are so special too. Very good birds! :( Sorry about that! The Iguana was quite fun, bath time was my job, he scratched the kids too much. Heh Poncho was his name. Loads of fun to watch him roam the house! He got old and passed, which happens. :) Birds had to go, hubby now ex didn't want birds anymore. He hated the noise and mess. LoL I didn't mind though. I just love the chinchillas they are sooo soft!

Currently having to deal with separation issues with my Dane, of all things! LOL He's so silly! He whistles/whines when I leave. It's crazy! So I'm having to gradually train him to accept my being separate from him. Even here in the home! Crates are a wonderful thing, he sleeps there every night but will have to learn to love it even during the day. :P 15 min. at a time! Oy!

~Tina

Iguanas are cool but I've never had one. I'd love a Jackson's and a Panther chameleon but wouldn't be able to properly house one. If I lived in zone 10 or 11 I'd have an outdoor enclosure with lots of chameleons. My DH is scared of birds, all birds. He's not a real animal lover, just cats and dogs for him....he thought. lol

When you say dane do you mean Great Dane? Where T F do you find a crate big enough? They're wondeful dogs. It's just so sad that the giant breeds have such a short life span. Bailey is a shepard doberman mix but is on the small side, about 70-80 lb. I like big dogs, not pocket pooches.

Doesn't it seem like most plant people are also pet people.

BTW another bird in the GH today. A sparrow. I wouldn't mind if they didn't freak out and knock the plants down. I don't understand why there's constantly birds in the GH lately. It's normally an inferquent occurance and only happens 1 - 2 X a year. Weird.

LOL Karyn! You made me laugh over the crate question, we were wondering the same. But PetSmart saved us. They fortunately do have one, huge too! I house him in his own room! :D

We spent about $200 on the crate alone. But worth the money. He sleeps in it every night. He's a beast at 141lbs and he's only 11mo. old! I love him dearly but his life expectancy is only 7-8 yrs or so. :( heart ache coming when that time frame comes. We've a blue heeler or better known as an Australian Cattle dog. Those are longer lived. 13-15yrs. Ament is the Great Dane and Anubis is the heeler. I love them both whole heartedly. :D You are so right, most who love plants -are- animal lovers.

Maybe you have something in that green house of yours that they just -have- to get at Karyn? LoL I feel for you, silly little creatures are so dingy! Maybe go buy a long handled fishing net? It'll make catching them easier! :)

Only issue I had with Poncho the iguana is his cage had to be cleaned quite often because I couldn't handle the wretched stench. They are quite smelly. LoL During the summer months we would take him outside to munch the lawn, we never sprayed the lawn just so we could do this. It was lots of fun. :)

~Tina

I hope that hummer got out Karyn! Not much of an animal lover here, but I do have 8 society finches, some goldfish out in a small pond and 5 hens. I plan to get rid of some of the finches because I really don't need that many, but they multiplied. Two of my hens are bantams and I would never get these again -- they are always broody. I want eggs, but broody hens stop laying!

I'm still trying to talk DH into building a coop and getting some hens for the backyard but he's not going for it. It's now legal to keep domestic fowl in the suburbs as long as their coop is 25'(?) away from the property line. I tried for years to talk him into getting some animals at the farm but that wasn't happening either : ( I really want a pigmy donkey and pigmy goats, maybe some fainting goats too, and a llama and....... You can see where this is going. lol

Oh gosh, I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs and laughed so darn hard at Mike and those fainting goats! LOL I've never seen an animal more amusing in my life. :D So funny! Llamas are interesting and very soft, very good guard animal too. But they will spit at you if they feel threatened by you. Hehe!

Not so certain my neighbors or my DH would appreciate chickens of any sort here even if I live on 1/4th an acre and could coop them. The noise alone would irritate them I think. lol I know folks would love fresh eggs though!

~Tina

In Colorado I saw a hummingbird buzzing around the Agastashe 1 week ago. It does seem a very late!

I know that hummingbirds can survive freezing temperatures because in the mountains here there can be year-round frosts, and I've gone camping in June and woke up to frost dusting the ground (and the tent) while the hummingbirds were busy flitting around like there was no problem. Hummingbirds are extremely common in the Rocky Mountains all summer and you'll come across swarms of them around meadows especially when the shortened growing season has everything blooming all at once.

I've heard that hummigbirds migrate based on a biological clock, not food - and that there are frequently stragglers - so it's a good idea to have a feeder out to help the stragglers make it.

I wonder if they are also adapting to environmental change?

Regardless of whether or not you want to point to climate change (and personally, I absolutely would cite that), it's also a fact cities extend the growing season an additional couple weeks in each direction because of the heat island effect, and also provide an abundance of non-native, late-blooming plants growing in gardens (for example, brugmansias!) that are not normally present this time of year.

Maybe human populations are serving as a secondary "corridor" for the hummingbirds to migrate later than they did 200 years ago! Cities and towns certainly do form chains that would be easy to migrate along. It would be silly to think some species wouldn't take advantage of the environmental change humans bring just as much as some other species are negatively affected.

I think your chinchilla may have mated with its own baby; seems a little disturbing but animals don't have the same aversion to that that people do, and there seems to be a lack of any other explanation!

Oy! That seems to me the only way too pizzuti. LoL Poor Karyn! I surely wish I wasn't so darn far away. Those little buggers are so cute. :) Sorry Karyn!

~Tina

The only chin that was in Cinder's cage was her female baby and the male had been removed before it's birth so I know there wasn't any back breeding. The only thing I can think of is maybe they managed to mate through the cages. Their cages are next to each other but I don't think that male chinchillas are particularly well endowed that it could reach her through the bars???? Maybe I should rename Bo, John (Holmes). lol

Wow Karyn! That would be absolutely nuts if that is what happened! LoL

How crazy!

~Tina

Karyn,
Is John Holmes a Friend? :-)
Bill

Ewwwww!!!!!!!!

OH I would Love to have one..
And Bill eeeewww!! Is right!!!!!!LMAO!!!!

Kylie

Interesting convo about pets in the middle of the brug forum, hehe. As a child we had macaws, african greys, lovebirds, bearded dragons, iguanas, chameleons, hamsters, mice, gerbils, guinea pigs, turtles, chickens, rabbits, you name it, we had it. I could totally go for a chinchilla. When I've got my own space, I'm gonna have everything from ducks, to sheep, to ferrets, to porcupines.

Oh, Ferrets, that reminds me of the two we adopted forcefully. A lady had two we were 'babysitting'. They were ditched on us! Very funny animals, however, if you have them... be prepared for the fact that they can and will steal any and everything that they can pick up! Socks, tv remotes, wallets. You name it, they took it. Haha! Crazy critters! And, they tend towards the smelly. So if you can't stand musky stink. Don't get them. ;) Baths are the name of the day with these guys.

We were stuck with two, but enjoyed them so thoroughly. Even though we didn't choose the adoption, it was forced. LOL

~Tina