April 17, 2000 - August 19, 2005
A year and a half
after Nemo's death, Elsa finally got to be where she wanted - with Nemo.
She had been incredibly sad without him as he was her best friend. There
were times they were so snuggly intertwined that if it weren't for their
color differences, we wouldn't have known where one chinchilla ended and
the other began. They were always together. Some time in the wee hours of
Friday, August 19, Elsa subcombed to her sadness and died. She was buried
next to Nemo, Ogden, Zoe, and Muji.
Elsa spent the first few weeks with us escaping from her cage. She
wriggled her little body out of an opening that was one inch by half an
inch. She was eventually placed in a glass aquarium with the lid weighted
with books. She didnšt escape from there. When Elsa grew too big for the
aquarium, she moved in with her new roommate Nemo. That was three years
ago. Even though she's too big to wedge through the bars, she still tries
feverishly every so often by jamming her noise repeatedly through the
bars. When she does get to run around the "animal room," Elsa loves to
climb to the top of her cage (on the outside), hang on the side for a
second or two, and then let go. She's our own little daredevil.
When we adopted Elsa, she was not even 7 weeks old. Her mosaic fur was
pretty much half white and half grey. Even her tail is half white, half
grey. As she has aged, the grey has faded and she is almost fully white.
If you look closely, you will see the very subtle difference between the
two colors. One would think that as she got older, the grey would be more
pronounced....
Name:
Elsa
Birthday:
April 17,
2000
Adopted:
June 3, 2000
(7 weeks old)
Age:
5 years old
Coloring:
Mosaic
(white with swirls of grey)
Likes:
Granola, dates, dried cranberries, falling from high places,
running around, biting the vacuum cleaner
Dislikes:
Scary noises
Talents:
Bungee
jumping without the bungee
Motto:
Life is only
fun when you're airborne.
Pictures:
Go to Elsa's Chinchilla Cay
History:
Elsa was "rescued" from a Minnesota fur farm. She was one of
almost 6,000 chinchillas. As for Elsa's name, wanted something that
actually meant something and started to look for names that meant
"rescued" or "freed" or "saved." In Aurthurian legend, Elsa was saved by
Percival, who was a knight in search of the Holy Grail. I haven't actually
come across the story of when Percival actually saves Elsa but I have a
feeling that she had escaped from her house only to be cornered by a
fire-breathing (or at least stinky breath)... cat.