Flöckli the clumsy chinchilla

It always feel good after a sand bath

Those vitakraft biscuits are so yummy

Back in January 2007, I decided to get one or two more chinchillas so I went on looking at online advertisements on the Internet. I wrote to a few of them until I found a very nice family in Basel-Land who wanted to give away their two chinchillas belonging to their daughter. The daughter, at that time 13 years old, lost interest in her two rodents and didn't want them anymore. The parents also told me she didn't have much time because of school. So they ended up taking good care of the two chinchillas until they found someone. I first received a mail with two pictures of them (unfortunately I can't find these pictures anymore since I have my laptop), one was white silver and the other standard, both females. I found them quite cute so I went for a first visit and this family was really friendly and pleasant. I got the chance to have the two of them on my arm and had already the feeling they like me. This winter evening I went back home the hands empty to have time to think about it - never buy a chinchilla immediately, that's a golden rule with any pet I would say. So after one week, taking in account the risk that someone else could get them, I decided to take them.
 
You may have guessed correctly, one of the two chinchillas, actually the white silver chinchilla, is Flöckli. I kept the original name the daughter and family gave her. This is a swiss german name, in English it would be pronounced something like "fleuklee". It actually means small ball. I guess they named it like this as an allusion to it's color and a small snow ball. So that matched pretty much the season, even if we didn't have any snow at that time.
 
Flöckli was around 7 years old when I got her. The family didn't know exactly when she was born but they think it has to be in 2000 and they got her from a pet shop. It's a pity that this pet shop don't keep track of these kind of information. So actually I don't know much about Flöckli's family or past, except that it had a nice time with this family and her cage mate Jini.
 
A special attribute of Flöckli is her clumsiness. That's the first chinchilla I ever saw which sometimes misses its target for example when jumping around from one platform or branch to another. She is accident-prone and I already had to go two times to the vet because somehow she hurt her eye and had it half open for a time. So I had to give her some antibiotics and after I few days the eye was fine again luckily. I am guessing that Flöckli was born like that, it makes it sometime funnny to watch, as long as she doesn't get hurt, well that's usually the case. The cage is pretty safe and doesn't have corners or such which could harm a chinchilla.
 
Notice the right ear corner on the second picture: a small part of it has got bitten off. The family told me that they first got Jini and then later on Flöckli so that Jini is not alone in its cage. But at the beginning they didn't like each other and I guess they had some small fights bitting each other their ears. Looks like Flöckli lost as Jini doesn't have any bitten ear. Still Flöckli has a very nice white silver fur: most of the body is white but the head and the tail are a bit more silverish.