xelay1

The highlight of every day at The Pipsqueakery is usually going to sleep snuggling whatever animal happens to be in bed that night (usually it's Delilah). Obviously some days there are more exciting things than that, but I like sleep and I don't get enough.

As for the facility... well the state department of health cashed my check for the septic permit on the 30th, so maybe a tiny bit closer?

They're smart, they're clean, they're fairly resilient, little kids will have a much harder time dropping them than say a guinea pig or a hamster because rats cling, and they're as domesticated as a dog in a much smaller package. Basically the ideal pet.

That would be a combination of things. Our first syrian hamster, Pipsqueak, passed away after 4 months of having her after being quite sick. In retrospect she probably had an infection called pyometra but we didn't know and didn't have a vet who knew at that point. She passed away during my first week of law school.

Then, during law school one of the primary extracurriculars I participated in was helping victims of domestic violence get protective order. As you can imagine that's pretty tough work emotionally and you often see repeat clients because the cycle of abuse makes it very likely that their abuser will convince the victim that the abuser has changed and to drop the protective order only to have the cycle repeat. While I never ever fault the victims for these things because there are much greater forces at play it is a reality that is very emotionally draining. So, we started with hamster rescue because with a hamster you can save them, put them in a nice big cage, give them good food and good health care, and keep them safe for the rest of their lives. You can't do that to humans (for obvious reasons) so it gave me an outlet that I wasn't getting elsewhere.

Ok well, here's the thing. We don't actually get much sleep. The rabbits in our bedroom that can jump (that's really only like 3 of them since this is the room for buns with mobility issues) have free access to our bed. Sleeping with them is no different than sleeping with a cat. That's the same for the groundhog, Delilah. When it comes to other animals sleeping in bed it's usually because they're sick and I'm hoping to save them while also not dying of sleep deprivation. In those cases I'm up every hour or two anyway, and sleeping very lightly. Also usually just a lot of towels to keep things clean, though the bunnies defy that and we just change sheets/comforters a lot.

So, we are in Indiana, and Indiana has notoriously lax laws for keeping exotics. We don't have any state restrictions on owning capybaras but we do have to notify our county animal management board about their existence in this county. While permitting is not a problem for us due to Indiana's laws it is an issue that people who want to own capybaras do need to research thoroughly because if they're illegal to own then there's going to be a lot of problems getting them adequate care.

Ours are surrenders, for the most part they aren't particularly invasive in the US and they certainly wouldn't survive up north in the wild.