Bruce has to leave...

[Brucey1234]

Bruce, my only chinchilla, passed away. We're not totally sure why, but I'm getting a new one!         

[Abby W.]

I'm so sorry!  It would be a good idea to try to at least get a good idea of what happened before getting a new chinchilla...you wouldn't want the same problem to harm the new one.  How did he behave in the days before he died?  Did his habits change at all?  How old was he? 

[Brucey1234]

Bruce was only four. We have a couple of things that we think may have caused it. 1. We only had him for a week, and nobody realized until after his death, that the water bottle is different from where we bought him. It has a ball in the nozzle, and I guess that they have to "relearn" how to drink out of it. 2. He may have had a problem before we bought him. (We do not think that this is the case, but the lady that we bought him from, is giving us a new one, for free.) 3. We just full-out worked him too much. He went from never leaving the cage, to running around twice a day. (If this was the case, we got a baby, so he won't be used to NOT running around, be we'll still take everything into consideration.) The morning before he died, he was laying in a slump. When we tried to pick him up, he would not move, and if you didn't support him, he would just flop over. We emailed the lady we bought him from (to get the vet). Our plan was to take him right after school. But when we got home, he was already dead. He was stiff and cold, so we know that he had been dead for a while! Thanks for your sympathy!

[mylittlechinchilla]

Aww. thats terrible.  Most any chin will drink out of a water bottle with a ball.

It must have been something else, there are so many things that can go wrong.

[Brucey1234]

Yeah. It was terrible. But I olny had him for a week. I mean, at least I didn't have him for like 10 years, then he died. But I still know that he loved me!