#and accidentally leave my dog outside to get eaten by a predator

[ashintheairlikesnow]

For Vampire Chris! What if he and Jake went to a museum and came across some of Tooley's paintings? And Chris has a panic attack! We would finally get some Jake comfort. And maybe Chris would reveal more horrible things that Tooley had done to him.

CW: Discussion of death, blood, vampire whumpee, caretaker and whumpee

The sun sets early in the winter, and it's the only reason they can make this work.

Chris is barely awake even so, sipping from a coffee cup Jake filled with the contents of one of his blood packs, hoping he doesn't trip and spill and lead to Jake having some very awkward, panicked explanations to make to anyone nearby.

He'd slept in the truck Jake borrowed from Nat most of the way over here, curled in the passenger seat. He looks for all the world like any high schooler who stayed up too late the night before, dragged out by his family, forced to go learn when all he wants is rest.

Chris is draped in a hooded sweatshirt pulled on over his head, hair mussed from sleeping in the closet in the little nest-bed he made for himself in there. It sticks out like stray from beneath the hood he's pulled up, coppery strands occasionally covering his eyes and making him shove them out of the way with a snort that has no right to be as adorable as it is, considering the monster who makes the sound.

Not a monster, no. Not really.

Or his monster, anyway, the same way his mother is his mother. Jake is starting to understand the little vampire - more than three times his own age - has chosen him for family now.

The sweater he wears is kind of a joke, actually. Jake bought it weeks ago from a website that puts the covers of books on clothes, and it's an old cover image from Dracula.

Jake thought it was funny, anyway. Nat was less amused. Chris only smiled and said something about being happy the hairy palms thing isn't true.

The air is chilly, and Jake shivers a little as they head in from the parking lot across a small sidewalk next to a park and toward the museum itself, but of course Chris doesn't even notice. He seems to be enjoying it, the way it blows around his hair as they make their way slowly up the steps and past the row of Grecian-style columns that mark the entrance.

Jake has to visit for one of his classes, an extra-credit something-or-other, and Chris had asked to go along with him.

Jake had been hesitant, but seeing the way the vampire's green eyes sparkle as he moves around in public like any other person, well... he feels like he made the right choice to bring him along now.

"Finish up your drink, you can't take anything in once we pay and get past the lobby," Jake says, and Chris nods, gulping the last of the blood as fast as he can as they push through wide double-doors. Jake tries not to imagine how it must feel, swallowing thick congealing cooled blood. Someone's life, someone's heartbeat, down your throat...

Really, is he that much different? Jake has eaten a dozen cows' worth of beef in his life.

Does Chris see them all as just livestock? He doesn't act like it, but then, there are people who treat pigs or cows like pets and not like food...

His stomach flips a little and he forces himself to look around, up at the chandelier at the high ceiling, the heavy wooden desk they have to walk to off to the side to get their tickets. To stop trying to understand if Chris is a sort of stray they've adopted, or if he's a higher-level predator living with prey.

Once Chris drops the cup into a trash can, Jake throwing a couple wadded-up tissues on top so no one can accidentally see the smear of red around the edge of the lid, they buy their tickets, and wind their way through and past the little velvet ropes that mark off the entrance.

The museum opens before them into a grand hall, with paintings the size of two-story buildings on either side, permanent installations in the museum. Commissioned for its opening, sometime back in the 70's.

Jake picks up a brochure so they know which way to go - LGBTQ+ Art in Pre-War America is the temporary exhibit he's here to see, traveling work that is usually housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

"Oh, nice, it's on the first floor. Looks like you go through a couple of 'specialty' rooms, just showing off stuff from the in-house collection. Sounds cool, right?"

Chris, looking from side to side at the gigantic paintings that hang on the walls in the opening hall, hums softly, a tuneless constant sound. He doesn't answer Jake's question. He hums often, and Jake barely notices any longer, but there's something edged to it, now. As if just being around the paintings is making him nervous.

"Okay, little man, let's go over here." He touches Chris's arm, lightly, through the thick fabric of his sweater. The vampire looks over at him, smiling with his lips pressed together to hide his teeth from any potential prying eyes.

He follows easily, but he sticks closer to Jake than he normally does, and his eyes are constantly roving. They move through an exhibit of Pre-Colombian pottery first, on their way to the room in the back where the temporary showcase is.

Jake watches Chris's fingers twitch with the urge to touch, to learn by feeling the bumps and ridges in the ancient clay, and how he holds back as best he can. His urge to lift the clear protective plastic boxes right off the pottery so he can get at it is nearly physically painful.

Jake pretends not to see it when Chris's fingers trail along a column, settling for the white-painted rectangle the pottery is balanced on, taking in the rough texture smoothed by the matte paint.

"Did you ever meet anyone like you that was old enough to have made stuff like this?" Jake asks, stopping in front of a water jug in the shape of a man playing a flute with a dog at his feet. The dog wears a carved smile marked with disturbingly human-looking teeth. The paint it must have been covered in is worn by time, leaving the reddish-brown of the clay behind, with the faintest streaks of white still in the crevices.

"No," Chris replies, tilting his head, making direct eye contact with the statue in a way he never quite can do with any real person. Not comfortably, anyway. Jake has seen him force it and shudder afterwards, overwhelmed. When he'd asked about it, Chris had said he never liked looking at anyone's eyes, even before, when he was alive. It's too much, was all he would say. It's always too much. "None, um, none of us live that long."

"Why not?" They're alone in the room. It's the only reason Jake feels safe asking.

Chris's tongue runs over the sharpening bumps of his growing-in fangs, pressing against them, easing the itch and the ache of their return. After a second, he pulls a plastic bat on a cord from inside his sweater and puts the bat into his mouth, chewing on it idly, jaw working. "I, I, I don't know. That's just what what what my, my, my pack told me."

"I thought vampires lived in covens."

"No." Chris doesn't elaborate on this one. He can be weirdly secretive about how he lived before he came to Nat's, before he was pulled out of a basement, a living drug for a wealthy asshole.

Secretive, or just forgetting whatever wasn't essential.

He moves away to another pedestal, a shard broken off of a larger vessel, marked with a deep white and intense black angular design. He hums again, and Jake takes the hint and leaves him alone.

They spend several more minutes looking over the pottery before they head through a second room full of what must just be the favorite pieces of museum employees, as there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason, and each little card with the name of the piece and its maker has a paper next to it with a note on why each employee loves this piece in particular. Chris lingers around older things, a woven tapestry from medieval England, landscapes from the 19th century. He stares for a while at a painting called The Country Path by Joseph Poole Addy, a pale watercolor of winter trees with bare branches breaking the line of sky and a woman bundled in a coat carrying a basket down an equally colorless road.

Chris's humming getting louder, and he rocks a little, forward and back, his eyes moving again and again through the lines of the painting.

Jake wonders what it is about this one specifically that catches Chris like that, and when the vampire finally moves on he checks the employee's statement. Joseph Poole Addy, Irish painter in the 19th and 20th centuries, blah blah, something something countryside... Jake frowns, and glances over at Chris, who isn't looking back. He's moved on to something else.

Jake decides to ask him later.

They make it to the exhibit they're here to see, and Jake whistles under his breath as he enters. There are vibrant, saturated paintings lining the walls, a couple of large sculptures on the floor that still are taller than he is, a few smaller ones on pedestals. The work is mostly figurative, although there's some early abstraction there, a hint of the contemporary push to take even figurative work out of simply being an echo of a real life thing.

Chris looks at a sculpture, his head cocked so far to the side it looks almost birdlike, not quite human. Jake thinks his own neck would ache for days if he tried to do that. "Must've been, um, later," He mumbles to himself.

Jake files that away in his mental list of things to talk to Chris about later.

He walks slowly along the line of paintings. The whole point of being here is that he's supposed to pick a specific piece and write a short essay about it and the artist who made it, prove he saw it in person.

The class itself is about how to encourage better outcomes for healthcare in marginalized populations - but if she's giving out extra-credit for looking at queer art, well, Jake is happy to spend an hour in a museum.

After his dismal performance on the last test, he could use whatever credit he can get. Besides, the exhibit is actually kind of cool with that in mind. Every one of these artists was in some way outside of the sort of het ideal, and Jake smiles a little as he catches the heaviness of a look between two men seated across a table from one another, looks over the clasped hands of women, sitting with everything from shoulder to hip touching, who are listed as 'friends visiting the riverbank'.

Art that celebrates, hidden in plain sight. Art that rebels by sliding details in under the surface where only those looking for them will find them.

Each piece has another little paper, although this just has details about the artist and their work, what they were known for. He can use it as a jumping-off point for his paper, anyway.

"You, you, you finished her," Chris whispers, standing in front of a sculpture of a woman with her head thrown back as if in uproarious laughter, a woman with curls expertly carved so that her hair seems to have been there before the stone it's made of somehow. "I wonder if she, um, if if if she saw it."

"What'd you say, Chris?" Jake blinks, pulled out of his own internal reverie.

"Nothing," Chris responds, and walks slowly around the statue. The woman's smile is a shining light in the room. No one could carve like that without being at least a little in love with the subject.

Jake wanders away and then comes to an abrupt stop before a large painting, probably taller than Chris is. The background is near-total darkness with only a suggestion of stone, a single beam of light shining down to illuminate the central figure.

A naked boy clothed only in scraps of torn cloth that only emphasize his nakedness everywhere else is crouched in terror. His knees are bent and his feet are on the floor, one hand holding his weight with fingers slightly curled, his spine bent and arched as if he is caught in the midst of turning to look up to find the direction of the light. His other hand is thrown out, as if trying to ward off an attack.

He bleeds from a dozen or more places, the blood curving perfectly around his form, giving it extra weight and heft that makes it seem like he'll step out of the canvas, grab Jake, and shake him.

Jake's heart starts to race as he stares.

There are bones littering the ground around the thin, wasted boy, not bleached but sort of yellowed, marked with little notches as if cut with a knife. There might still be bits of skin attached to some of them, a hint of muscle. The detail makes Jake sick, but his panic, that comes from something else entirely. Just behind the panicked boy there is a body, as if just fallen, the eyes still open in the final terrified throes of death. The body's fingers are still dug into the dirt floor as if the dead man had been trying to pull himself somewhere, to escape.

A skull watches with eerie cheer from one corner of the painting, a few teeth missing and knocked out from its garish grin.

Barely visible, a thin wash of grayish-white, there is a pale, gnarled hand near the bottom reaching out from the background as if to grab the boy's ankle and drag him into the darkness.

Count Ugolino's Last Son, oils, 1932, reads the little plaque beside the painting. Its faint brassy shine glints in the carefully calibrated light. Edward Tooley, 1907 - 1936.

Jake swallows, but the lump in his throat doesn't budge, and he swallows again. And again. He can't take his eyes off the boy's painted hair, a dirtied copper, strawberry-blond badly in need of a wash. The wide green eyes with their terror writ large and clear, painted with lovingly perfect detail.

The boy in the painting is the perfect identical twin of the vampire who is still staring at the sculpture on the other side of the room. The fear in his face is so expertly done as to seem more photographic than painted in oil. The blood that drips to the ground follows his anatomy with absolute perfection. The bones are not bleached by they so often are in paintings, no, these...

These...

Jake holds his phone up and takes a photo, and then another of the little plaque.

"Chris." His voice cracks and Jake clears his throat. His heart is still pounding. "Chris, come look at this."

"Yes, Jake," Chris answers, sounding a little faint, and then he seems to simply appear at Jake's elbow, the teenage boy who has seen two world wars and a half-dozen smaller, stupider ones.

He goes still at Jake's side when he looks up. Jake looks over, just slightly, glancing sidelong to see a look of something like... wistfulness on the vampire boy's face.

"Tooley," He breathes. His hand goes up, and out, and he would have touched the canvas if Jake hadn't reached out and grabbed on to stop him. Chris jumps a little and turns to meet Jake's gaze. His eyes are pink-tinged in the whites, as if he's holding back tears. "Is, is, is he famous?"

"I guess. He's... he's here, isn't he?"

"He always wanted to, um, to to to to be famous." Chris's eyes move over the details, but it's not with surprise, it's with easy familiarity. He's seen this painting before.

He's been this painting before.

"That's you, isn't it?" Jake asks in a hushed voice. "Like, that was really you."

Chris looks away again, a faint flush in his cheeks. He's full enough of blood for it to happen, and you'd never know he isn't alive if you didn't already. "Yes," He whispers, and wipes at the corner of his eye with one hand. "That, that, that's me."

"Were you his model?" Jake blinks, looking back over the painted twin of the vampire beside him. The fear in the boy's face, woven in with a kind of awful resignation. It's all so perfectly rendered.

"Yes. Sort, um. Sort of. He, he, he kept me in a room." Chris exhales, slowly, and his eyes shift over to the paper with the little bit of biographical information on it. Edward Tooley's early works focused on landscapes or retreads of common historical subjects, only to find greater excellence and focus when he began to paint, again and again, the same figure - a representation of the darkness of the human soul - he stated appeared to him and demanded to be portrayed... art historians believe Tooley was driven by the demons of the Great War that had taken his family from him one by one to seek out uncomfortable subjects that force viewers to see the damage humans do to one another...

Chris's nose wrinkles as he reads, his lips moving slightly with the words as he takes them in. "I never did that. Never, um, wanted to be painted. Also, um this, um. He was... wasn't... he wasn't... wasn't like the paper says."

Jake looks over, reads it himself. Gregarious, sociable, popular with the libertine art crowd... he frowns. "What part is wrong?"

"This." Chris points, this at least he can safely make contact with, and presses the pad of his finger under a sentence that reads took inspiration from the ugly side of the city hidden under its shining lights. "He, he, he he didn't care about anyone in the city. He thought everyone who, who who who who-who wasn't him was, um, was stupid."

"What did he care about?" Jake imagines telling his professor that instead of an essay, he's going to bring in a vampire who literally knew one of the artists in person. How she might react.

Probably call the cops and report an unsecured vampire loose on the streets. But maybe she'd listen to what Chris had to say first.

"Blood," Chris says, softly. His voice is getting lower and lower, until it's barely more than a whisper. "Pain. Fear. Being... being the the the the last person who, who saw someone. He, he, he, he liked to lay them out and paint them, liked me to, to, to... arrange them for him."

Jake's eyes go unwillingly back to the dead body behind the scared boy in the painting. The grasping fingers, the open eyes that look sightless, lifeless, at nothing at all. When he looks, he can see - more suggestion than made clear - that the body's throat is torn open, as if by an animal's teeth.

Now, only now that he's looking for it, does he realize there is the slightest hint of red tears on the cheeks of the painted boy, a sheen of pink on his teeth where he begs for mercy from the grasping singular hand coming out of the dark.

His stomach flips again. "Chris, are you saying-"

"His, his, his name was Ben." Chris nods at the dead body in the painting. "I asked. Before..." He gestures, a little vaguely. "That."

Jake feels a sudden, wild urge to look up missing persons cases from New York City in 1932. See if there's anyone named Ben on there. He knows without having to do so that there definitely will be.

"What happened to him... after?"

"I don't know. I, I, I was never let out when Tooley was gone. I... wonder how, how, how many of me there are." Chris looks up at the echo of his own face, his head tilting again. His lips tremble, just a little, and then part to show the hint of white teeth wet with pinkish saliva. "On walls, in houses, in... in places like, um. Like this. How many there are... is, is, is, is that what I still look like?"

Jake clears his throat again, looks down at his feet. This feels, suddenly, like he's walked in on someone looking down at his own dead body in a funeral home. Interrupting a moment so immensely private it shouldn't even exist.

"Yeah," he says, a little gruffly. "Yeah, that's it. More or less. Except I hope I scare you less than that. Also you wear a lot more clothes with us."

Chris laughs - it's a huff of sound, barely-there. Then he turns away from himself. "We, we, we can't see ourselves, in mirrors," He says, and he's got the little plastic bat back in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the carved silicone. "But I have mirrors everywhere. On these walls."

He goes suddenly terribly still. He isn't breathing.

He doesn't have to, but the realization that he isn't even pretending is a jolt of awareness of exactly how dead Chris is. He leaves the exhibit, and Jake is left to scramble after him, struggling to catch up to someone he should be able to easily outrun.

He breaks into a flat run when they get outside the double-doors, jumps the steps three at a time with grace, and runs across the grass and towards the stand of trees halfway across the park. Even Jake, who works out four days a week, is breathing hard and has a hitch in his rib by the time he catches up.

He finds Chris curled up under a tree in the evening dark, the stars starting to twinkle overhead as the sun finally allows them a clear night sky to shine in.

Jake drops to his knees, ignoring the damp that seeps into his jeans from soil that still hasn't dried since yesterday's rains, and he leans over, putting a warm hand to either side of the vampire's face.

Chris looks up, his eyes glinting like a cat's briefly in the dark, and there are trails down his cheeks, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl that is anything but angry.

No, this is grief.

This is loss.

Jake knows the feeling.

"Talk to me," Jake says softly. "Tell me what it was like, what it's been like for you. Tell me about the life you've lived before I knew you."

"It, it, it hurt," Chris whispers, and his own hands cover Jake's. They're the same temperature as the air around them, and Jake shivers a little. It's almost a chill. "Every time. I, I, I try not to kill, Jake, I try so hard, but but but he would keep me so hungry and I couldn't-... stop..."

Jake thinks about the robbers Chris killed - for him, to save him from them - and how he'd locked himself in the closet afterward. Had he cried like this, over taking lives even when in defense?

"The museum thing said this guy Tooley died in 1936. He was only, what, twenty-nine? Did... did you-"

"Yes." Chris's voice is thick but it's not quite with regret. "I was hungry. He, he he he he didn't bring food. I was so hungry... then I was, um, was alone for a while... then, then, then, then then then I was taken for, for, for the, um, the trade, for my v-venom, and..."

"Got it. I got it, Chris. It's okay," Jake says, softly. "It's going to be okay. You're with us, now. And we'll never, ever make you hurt someone that way. We'll never make you go hungry. We'll never hurt you or use you."

Chris ducks his head, rocking forward until it knocks into Jake's shoulder, and Jake slides his arms around the vampire's shoulders, listening to his soft, muffled sobs, wondering how red his shirt will be stained by the time the vampire's tears have been cried out.

The same mouth that tore out the throat of a dead body that lays in a painting on the wall is so close to his neck it would take less than an inch for him to bite down. Even without fangs, he could lock his jaw and break the skin.

The same dangerous monster that has killed likely dozens to stay alive, the same stalking predator that has been the last sight of far too many, cries in his arms. Just a teenage boy who has been lonely, and terrified, and hurt for too long.

A teenager... and a monster that hunts prey after dark. Jake tightens his arms around Chris, holds him tighter.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter how long he's been alive, not really.

He's just Chris.

That matters more.

-

@mylifeisonthebookshelf @insaneinthepaingame @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @newandfiguringitout @astrobly @endless-whump @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @doveotions @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @what-a-whump

[sideblogformindtrash]

A GUIDE TO RUNNING ON THE WOODS ™

Keep in mind this is mostly based on the forests I’m familiar with and my own observations: highlands; temperate climate, very few species of large predators. This may vary for tropical and boreal forests, as well as country-wise; geography is also highly variable; Also, this intended as a writing resource for a community that likes to torture their ocs; don’t take this as survival tips, I’m just some dude on tumblr.

CW: Just about anything that can happen on a forest that I remembered about.

General/Terrain-wise:

-The floor likely won’t be plain. There might be plenty of spaces that will require climbing or careful descent; there might be places where the ground isn’t steady;

-If it has rained recently, the floor will be slippery; it’s very hard to climb. If the soil is mostly of clay, it’s almost like running on soap. In that case, places that are used as a passage (trails and such) are much more slippery than the ground around, due to lack of leaves/branches and also the process of compacting the floor that occurs on frequently used trails;

-If it is raining while you are on the forest, branches, fruits and maybe whole trees will fall. It’s easy to get hit by it. Pine trees, specially, are very likely to drop branches and pines.

-If not following a path, there will be plenty of branches making the passage difficult; a lot of them on the floor. It’s easier to trip and get cut on the branches that are fallen than the ones that are closer to the eye-sight so plenty of cuts and bruises will be on the legs.

-There are holes on the floor made by burrowing animals. If it’s dark or you are running, is very easy to break a leg by falling on one of those.

-There are probably some river-streams on the forest. Most might be tiny, but crossing them can be tricky, the rocks are slippery and might be sharp;

-This river-streams are likely at a lower level than the rest of the terrain, causing a stiff descent – river – ascent terrain shape, like a V.

-If the forest is just a patch in the middle of a rural area: somewhere there will be barbed wire. People still like to divide their territory even if it’s in the middle of nowhere.

-There might be bridges, but the estate they are in might be bad; or they may be just pieces of wood far apart with room to trip.

Animals:

-Most mammals and birds are very unlikely to be a bother on the forests. But arthropods will. It’s possible to step on ant-hills or get caught on spider webs. It’s unpleasant, but, most spiders aren’t very poisonous (largely depending on where exactly you live).

-On the other hand, plenty of caterpillars can be dangerous; varying from causing burns to species that can kill you from shock. Caterpillars stay on tree branches, some of them have colors that make them mask with the trees and leaves, so it’s very easy to accidentally touch one while holding a branch; specially for someone on a panic;

-There are mosquitoes. A. Lot. Of. Mosquitoes. They are annoying but following the swarms might indicate a water-source. Lakes and swamps might have leeches;

-BATS: they tend to fly on open paths; if there is a trail on the forest they’ll follow it instead of going through the middle of trees or over them. They are also little bitches and like to go close to your head to mess with you; but they are very unlikely to attack. Most of them eat insects, fruits and plants.

On rural areas:

-There might be agressive dogs trained to protect the households or the other animals;

-Cattle itself isn’t friendly either. They’ll try to avoid you most likely, but if you get too close they will attack. Cows can be very aggressive. (Sure, they can be docile too if they have a lot of human contact, specially towards their owners, and are pretty intelligent animals, but cattle on a pasture is unlikely to be trained to be docile and will see a stranger as a treat). They are more likely to attack if they have youngs. Imagine running away from your whumper just to die to a cow. 

-The one above also apply to goats, sheeps and llamas. Pigs are generally not agressive and will more likely just run.

Water/Food:

-Still water is the less safe to drink. Clear, running streams are safer. The closer to the spring source the less likely to be polluted; however is never safe to drink a large amount without being sure.

-They might contain parasites; however, parasites take a while to manifest any type of symptom and are manageable. Dehydration isn’t. This is to short term-forest scenarios. Some parasites will cause diarrhea, that will lead to further dehydration.

-If lacking in options, a way to filter the water is digging a hole close to the water source and getting the water that fills the hole; the dirty and rocks will help filter it somewhat.

-Rainwater is the safest source; As well as indirect sources such as fruits; however very non-reliable.

-Some trees have thorns on the branches or on the trunk. Some of them have on vines, too.

-There are crabs on freshwater! They aren’t too hard to catch, it can be done by having a small net and causing some movement in the bottom of the stream; however they are usually very small so not a huge food source.

-Insects, if not venomous/poisonous, are food ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-I’m trying to write about frogs, but like, we have a distinction between sub-types of frog that make this easier but for what I can see on English, everything is just frog or toad so………… maybe take this with a grain of salt, but:

-Frogs can be food too. Some of them are really dense and will just let you catch them. HOWEVER HYLYDAE FROGS AND TOADS ARE POISONOUS. On the case of toads, they have poisonous glands on their skin; they might be safe to eat if the person knows how to remove those;

-AS A GENERAL FOR ANIMALS: THE MORE COLORFUL SOMETHING IS, THE MORE LIKELY IT IS POISONOUS;

-There are about 50.000 plants that can be eaten, but aren’t cultivated so we tend to not know about them. There are plenty of plants that have some medical use, as well.

Medicine:

-Calendula and Arnica might be some ya’ll might like; they help with cicatrization and easy muscular pain.

-Lighting a fire on a humid forest is very very very difficult. Soggy wood and green leaves don’t like to burn. Philodendron imbe can be used to soothe Burns (it has to be slightly cooked). (I can write more on this if someone is interested).

-Is possible to be mostly immune to poison ivy burn. It’s an allergic reaction; albeit a very common one. However it’s also possible to get more sensitive to it overtime;

Caves:

-There are wet and dry forests; on a temperate forest, while it’s possible to find caves, they’ll likely be flooded or have small, discreet entrances that someone won’t notice on a panic. When on doubt, follow the bats.

-It’s. Dark. It’s ungodly dark. Think the darkest room you’d ever been at: it’s dark. The passages can be very narrow, barely fitting a person. The terrain inside can be very irregular and full of holes as well.

-Caves are humid even if they don’t have rivers inside them anymore. They also have their own mini-climates that tend to be stable during the whole year; And while some are cold, there are also some that are warm. They might be a good place to stay if the outside temperature is freezing cold, as long as not losing sight of the entrance.  

-They house snakes, scorpions and spiders. Again, baths won’t bother you, but you can get sick from the guano (from breathing fungi spores of H. capsulatum that grown on it); or get an accidental scratch when they are diving for the outside;

[ratmonky]

The Danger Next Door

Tenko would have been much worse is he hadn’t met AFO.

AO3 Link

Warnings on this chapter: mentions of animal abuse, animal death, stalking, bullying

Word Count: 1.8K

Looking back, you couldn’t remember when was the first time you had met Tenko. He had told you that you two had met in the town’s playground when you were both seven but you were sure you had seen him somewhere else even before that.

Tenko had lived in the house next to yours. Your room was across his. His father was friends with yours and your mother worked in the agency Tenko’s father worked. Most people and your family considered you two as childhood friends. 

Tenko had warmed up to you very quickly. He declared you as his best friend forever. 

You, on the other hand, considered Tenko as anything but your friend. He was weird. Nobody wanted to hang out with him, neither did you but you were forced by your parents to play with him. 

There were rules though. 

You weren’t supposed to let Tenko touch you without his gloves and you were told to tell a grown-up if Tenko ever took off his gloves. 

Your parents kept telling you about how Tenko had to wear those special gloves and if he didn’t he would hurt someone.

As long as you followed the rules you would be safe… right?

~~~

Tenko liked to hike with you. 

You were always so squeamish about the dead animals you two found by ‘coincidence’ and you yelled at Tenko to not touch them. 

“You touch it!” Tenko cheered you on excitedly, beckoning you to crouch next to him and touch the decaying rabbit.

“Can we just go home?” you nagged.

“Just touch and.. and we’ll go home!”

“Promise?” you hesitantly asked. Tenko never held his promises.

“Promise,” he smiled.

You reluctantly walked closer to him and crouched next to the dead rabbit. From up close the animal looked worse. It had been manifested with maggots and you could see the weird wound it had. The poor animal didn’t have its lower half, probably eaten by some predator.

Slowly you reached your hand to touch it but your body wouldn’t let you. The dead animal was far too disgusting to look at.

When you made a move to retrieve your hand, Tenko grabbed you by your wrist and led your hand to the corpse of the animal. You shrieked as he forced you to stick your hand inside the wound. 

“Tenko! Stop!” you cried, you could feel the larvae squirming around your hand. The weird yellow fluid started oozing out from the animal and covered your hand.  

Only when you started scream crying Tenko let your hand go. 

You went running back home. No matter how much you washed your hand or tried to scrub it, the stench never left.

You cried yourself to sleep that night.

~~~

One day just before a month you two started the last year of the middle school, Tenko dragged you to an abandoned storage cabin in the forest to show you all the treasures he had been collecting ever since he had inherited his Quirk. 

The things Tenko collected weren’t anything you had seen before. They weren’t rocks or leaves. 

“This is Mon!” Tenko said excitedly. “He’s cute, right? You love him, right?” 

You stood there petrified as he held the dead dog up to your face by its tail, encouraging you to pet it. 

You screamed.

Tenko panicked and tried to stop you from screaming. “He’s just my pet dog!” 

That didn’t work.

You turned around on your heels to get out of there but Tenko caught you by your wrist and overpowered you easily. He used his entire weight to push you down and sat on your back to keep you in place. 

“Let me go!” you squirmed under him and cried. 

“Promise me you won’t tell my dad,” he pleaded. He was still holding what was remained of his dead pet. “I have to keep Mon here with everyone because my dad doesn’t like them, ” he said. “If you tell my dad he’ll take them away from me!”

You refused to listen and kept on crying. Which made Tenko snap. He grabbed a fistful of your hair with his free hand and pulled your head back by your hair. “Promise me.”

You kept on crying. 

Tenko reached to his newest pet he had adopted, Haku. He put Mon down and threw Haku right in front of you. 

Haku was a skunk flooded with maggots. 

You gagged and tried to move away from it but Tenko held you in place. He took off his glove, reached to Haku and touched the dead animal. You watched as the skunk slowly decayed and with the unbearable smell of rotten flesh filling your nostrils, you threw up your lunch. 

Somehow disgusted by your puke but not by his dead animal collection, Tenko got up from your back, giving you a chance to escape. 

You ran without looking back yet you heard him loud and clear.

“If you tell anyone about Mon-chan, I’ll kill you!”

That was the last time you had ever talked to Tenko. You never told anyone about anything that happened.

~~~

You remembered it now. 

You had first seen Tenko in the news. 

He was the boy who had inherited a mutant Quirk and had accidentally killed everyone in his family but his father. 

You felt kind of bad for him but you brushed it off once you started your last year in school and made new friends.

Tenko didn’t make any new friends. He desperately waited for you to talk to him and return to the abandoned storage cabin in the forest to play with him.

But you never did. You kept going further away, getting more and more popular and loved by others, forgetting about Tenko.

~~~

“Can I sit here with you-”

You didn’t look up to Tenko, you immediately left, leaving your lunch behind.

Defeated, Tenko sat down and noticed the lip balm you had left behind. When he was sure nobody was looking, he took it. Just like he did with most of your stuff. 

~~~

The mentor asked you where you wanted to study in high school, you told him you wanted to go to the public high school in Kamino. 

Outside the mentor’s office, Tenko scribbled down the name of the high school he heard in his notebook.

~~~

You had thought if you had chosen a highschool far far away from home, you would finally manage to get away from him. 

Oh, how wrong you were.

Because here he was, sitting right next to you during the opening ceremony. 

Tenko tried to talk to you but you didn’t answer. You kept on ignoring him, wishing to have chosen the public highschool in Fukuoka. Maybe then you would never have to see him again.

What you didn’t know was that he would follow you to the edge of this world. No matter how far.

~~~

Thankfully, Tenko wasn’t in your class. That meant you would be at least more free and lively without being scared of accidentally looking at him with a smile on your face, giving him a reason to be happy about. 

Your new classmates were friendly. They liked you a lot and you liked them. Every passing week you started to get more and more popular as Tenko got more and more isolated in his own class. 

But that didn’t stop Tenko from coming to your class and try to get your attention during each break. 

Although you continued to ignore him, your classmates started to notice how desperate he was to talk to you. People started to call him weird names and laugh at him because of his obsession with you.  

Whenever one of your friends asked you if Tenko was someone you knew, your answer was always that you didn’t know who he was and you thought he was a stalker.

Your explanation of the situation made it clear that Tenko was actually obsessed with you. Your friends started telling Tenko to go back to his class and yell at his face for being such a creep. 

One day, when you were cleaning the classroom after school with your friend, Tenko came to the classroom. He stood by the door and watched you two.

Irritated by you not saying anything to the stalker, your friend wanted to take the matters into his hands and went a little overboard. 

“What are you waiting for? Go home weirdo!” He pushed Tenko very slightly. 

Although he was very tall and built, the push hadn’t been that strong, Tenko was furious. 

He pushed him back and the guy who was double the size of Tenko almost flew across the classroom. He stumbled back and fell on the floor after losing his balance.

You went running to your friend. He started yelling at Tenko, telling him to go and die.

“Do you know about my Quirk?” you watched as Tenko’s good hand reached to his other hand, threatening to take his glove off. 

He had to be fucking kidding. 

But this was Tenko, he didn’t joke around.

You were trapped in the empty classroom with no one around. 

“Why can’t you just give up?” you asked. “I don’t want to be your friend.” Your voice was quivering in fear. You couldn’t stop thinking about the dead animals he made you touch. Your hands started to shake.

“I don’t want you to be my friend,” Tenko furrowed his brows while talking. He looked sweaty, desperate and obsessed. “I want you to be mine.”

“Huh?” your friend scoffed, holding onto you as he got up. “Just how delusional are you? She told you she doesn’t want to be with you. Are you mentally deranged or something?”

Tenko smiled at you. “She likes me.”

You opened your mouth to tell him you didn’t like him but your friend spoke over you. 

“What if she’s dating someone else? Then what?” he asked.

Tenko stumbled on his words. “She’s not dating anyone,” he muttered.

Your friend put his arm around you and glowered at Tenko. “What if I told you that we were dating?”

You were as surprised as Tenko but managed to not show it through your facial expressions, you knew your friend was saying this to get Tenko to leave you alone.

Dead silence fell in the classroom. You shifted on your foot uncomfortably as Tenko’s eyes widened. He stood right in front of you for a moment. His eyes went back and forth between you and your friend but he never said anything. Then the unthinkable happened, Tenko left without any fuss.

Your friend started walking you home and never left you alone to make sure Tenko never approached you again. Your friend sat with you during breaks whenever Tenko came by. 

And after a while, Tenko stopped coming to your class during breaks. 

You had thought he had finally given up.

[theramseyloft]

You probably already get this question alot, but could I have some care tips (Cage requirements, food, basic care) and anything that might repel me from them? (Especially for a racing Homer - which is what I'm assuming they have here since pigeon racing is quite a big industry in my country) (I'd love to adopt but sadly that's not an option here since there's barely even dog rescues here) Thanks so much in advance!

I’ll start with what might repel you, starting with things inherent to the species, and then to potential effects of their personal history.

First thing’s first; DUST!!! 

If you, or any one in your house hold, has dust related allergies or any respiratory issues at all, pigeons are not the pet for you.

They are dust monsters! For their size, the Columbidae produce more dust that any other domestic bird.

It is also a much finer dust. It floats in the air like thin smoke and takes a long time to settle, so you will breathe more of it with a group of pet pigeons than you would with parrots, chickens, quail, or song birds.

Definitely more than any mammalian dander that I know of.

Pigeons are only really territorial over what they consider a nest space. Away from their nests, they are social and quite friendly, but the fiercely defend their nest from all comers.

If they are in a loft, or have free flight of a room, that aggression is constrained to the actual nest itself and anything with in about half a body length from the lip of it.

But if they are in a cage, the entire cage is space that they feel a powerful instinctive drive to defend.

Any uninvited entry is seen as an intrusion either by a predator or a rival, so I usually advise people not to attempt to physically interact at all with the pigeon in their cage. 

Talking to the birds is fine, but all physical intrusion is seen as aggression that they have to defend against.

So, when you want to begin physically interacting with them, it’s best to invite them out into your room in the evening.

I’ll go into coop and home interaction training after the basic housing part.

Unless they are out of a sex linked pair, or you get them as fully mature adults, pigeons are absolute hell to sex.

Homers do become dimorphic as they age.

Karen is an adult racing homer cock.

Bird-bird is an adult hen of the same breed.

Look at Karen’s wattle (The thick skin above his nasal slits, at the base of his beak)

Now look at Bird-Bird’s.

His wattle is much bigger and more intricately developed than hers. 

Her face is much finer featured than his.

He stands more upright.

She stands more horizontal.

But as peeps, they are nearly impossible to differentiate.

This is important, because the social behavior of cocks and hens and how it translates to humans tends to be VERY different.

Hens are VERY cuddly! Even into adulthood.

But adult cocks are platonically touch repulsed.

A flock mate is likely to make physical contact with a cock for one of two reasons: Another cock starting a fight, or a hen asking for sex.

They even make friends with flock mates through combat.

Until it sinks in otherwise, all attempts at physical contact with a cock is perceived as a challenge to a fight.

Non-aggressive contact with a cock is seen as an invitation for him to be your mate, and cock love is VERY pinchy!

Pigeon courtship consists of a three part ritual called Driving.

In the Chase trial, A cock will harass and bite a hen until she flees. If she was interested first, she’ll flirt to get his attention, and then fly off.

He HAS to chase her, keep up with her, and out maneuver her, all while herding her towards his nest so that she dives in when she’s too exhausted to continue to fly.

If he cannot out maneuver her, fly faster, and stay in the air longer than her, then her peeps will be more likely than her to be caught and eaten by a predator, and she will refuse that cock the opportunity to fill her eggs.

After she inspects the nest and has rested, she will try to leave. The second courtship trial revolves around blocking her exit and physically wrestling her back in until she is too exhausted to keep fighting him.

If he cannot block the generally smaller, weaker hen from leaving and fight her to a stand still, then he can’t hope to block another cock trying to force his way in, throw him out if he manages to pop in by surprise, or keep fighting him until he gives up.

Only after proving his stamina and strength to the Hen directly may he offer her a sample of the contents of his crop.

This is the sweet kissing part of courtship, after which they preen and cuddle and he’s allowed to step up onto her back and tread her.

This translates very poorly with a human partner, and if you have a cock as a companion, you have to be ok with a LOT of love bites before you can get to the soft cuddly part of the relationship.

Suddenly running up to you and biting out of nowhere is NOT aggression. They give LOTS of warning when they are upset.

Running up to attack you out of nowhere is a misguided attempt to begin Driving you, and he will go WAY over the top with it, because he is trying to impress a COLOSSUS with his physical strength, stamina, and tenacity.

You can understand how this could translate poorly to a human partner!

There are ways to respond to minimize the bitey bit, but we’ll get to those in another ask. This one is going to be VERY long as is.

Now, what we have just discussed is base line pigeon, with no outside components making anything more difficult.

Racers old enough to fly have been through daily training tosses; where they are grabbed, put in a basket, and released every day at increasing distances from the loft.

The best case scenario is a strong fear of hands from being grabbed and stuffed into the basket and occasionally restrained and injected with a vaccine. 

The luckiest individuals have only had to navigate for miles every day to return to safety, food, and family.

Racing birds can also have to dodge hawks, or fly through inclement weather during training flights.

Some can even make it home severely injured.

Understandably, adult racers of either sex will need to be patiently worked through a STRONGLY reinforced fear of hands.

We have lots of posts discussing how to work with fearful pigeons, and I’ll be happy to go into it again in more detail, but that’s another for a different post.

Basics of care for pigeons are very simple.

They are strict granivores. Seeds are all they can digest, but they can eat a very wide variety of seeds. The more variation, the better.

Pigeons do not hull their seeds. They swallow them whole, and depend on the hulls as vital dietary fiber, so don’t give them seed that is already hulled.

Their diet should involve as much variety of seed, grains, and legumes as you can get your hands on, the size of an unpopped kernel of popcorn or smaller (Most breeds can;t swallow seeds much bigger than that) with some source of calcium available.

You can have a separate dish of oyster shell, or you can sprinkle powder in a single birds daily meal, or add liquid calcium to their water dish.

NOT all of those at once! Calcium can be overdosed!

Which ever method works most easily for you and your bird.

Pigeons are intensely social birds that get most of their enrichment from interaction.

They are happiest as free roaming house pets, like a cat or dog, that can come see you or go do their own thing as they choose.

Pigeons are smart enough to learn house rules.

Understandably, that is not an option for every one, and free roaming unsupervised before they learn the house rules can be dangerous.

If you cannot let the bird free roam their own room, you can easily modify a dog crate to house them comfortably.

They need square perches. Because they are cliff nesters, round perches put painful pressure on the ball of their feet, making walking painful.

I like to cut garden stakes to length and wire them into place.

A corner bunny litter pan is a decent nest box, but not necessary. They will nest just as happily in a cheap dog food dish.

Pigeons are ground foragers, so they prefer a shallow dish of food on the floor of their enclosure.

Ideally, the modified crate cage for the pigeon should be used like it would be for a pet dog; That is not where the animal lives full time. That is where it sleeps at night or hangs out when you aren’t home to supervise it, until it learns the house rules.

Toys are very simple, because their interaction tools are very limited.

Pigeons can recognize themselves in mirrors and love to play with them.

They enjoy bathing in a dish of water about hip-deep.

They can have sand or straw filled forage boxes to hunt for treats like safflower seeds in.

Stick-shaped, Shiny, and Jingly is their holy trinity of toy characteristics.

q-tips with the cotton tips cut off, tooth picks with the points clipped, wicker kitty balls with jingle bells inside, bread ties with jingle bells that are too big to accidentally swallow  twisted to either side, or made into a jingly ring, are all cheap, simple toys that a single pet bird will have fun playing with.

I mentioned coop training earlier, and it’s super simple.

Starting in the evening, open the door to the cage and invite the bird out.

Don’t hang around waiting for it to come. Go settle in to do something quiet and sedentary, like reading a book or surfing the net.

Pigeons are naturally curious, and the best way to work then through the fear of people they may have developed is to be as nonthreatening as possible and reward their curiosity.

Talk to them to desensitize them to your voice and start teaching them how you communicate.

They will eventually grow brave enough to come explore you yourself. 

A quiet, pleased greeting will reward them by not startling them.

Have safflower seeds available, but don’t try to reach out to give it to the birds.

Let them discover that you have them, and be still and non-reactive when they take some. Offer verbal praise, but don’t start trying to move until they ease away from automatic flightiness.

I specify beginning this process in the evening because trying to get a bird back into the crate before it trusts you is very difficult and your best bet to avoid making it afraid of you despite your friend-making efforts is to avoid having to chase it back into its pen at the end of flight time.

Starting these in the evening allows you the option to avoid chasing entirely just by turning off the lights.

At the end of out time, give a verbal warning like “Lights out” or “Bed Time”, and then wait a minute or two before actually turning off the light.

Pick the bird up in the dark, and return it gently to its enclosure.

It will begin to associate the “Lights out” or “Bed time” warning with the lights going out, and eventually learn to fly back to the pen in the space of time before the lights actually go out.

That’s about the skin and bone basics of care.

Please, by all means, send more asks for more information on any aspect or detail of pet pigeon keeping.

I am always happy to answer. ^v^

[lovemychinchilla]

What Scares Chinchillas?

Chinchillas are well known for getting stressed and scared. But what scares chinchillas, and can you help a scared chinchilla? Do you even need to?

What scares chinchillas? Chinchillas scare easily, and loud noises, sudden movements, strangers, being touched unexpectedly or being handled roughly, other pets, being chased, and fighting between cage mates can all make your chinchilla scared. To calm your chinchilla down, ensure it has a suitable cage by removing bullying cage mates and giving it somewhere to hide. Avoid handling your pet too frequently or making loud noises when you're at home. But even if you do all this, you can't stop a chinchilla getting scared sometimes.

The guide below first looks at why chinchillas get scared so easily, plus the signs to look for in a scared chinchilla. Then we'll cover what scares chins and how to fix each of them.

Do Chinchillas Get Scared Easily?

Chinchillas do get scared easily. They're skittish and can get stressed at what, to us, are normal things. While you can prevent some things that regularly frighten them, such as loud noises from the TV, your chinchilla will occasionally get spooked by things that are outside your control anyway.

Why Do Chinchillas Get Scared So Easily?

[caption id="attachment_1951" align="alignright" width="300"] Chinchillas need to listen and look for predators. Image courtesy of Jaime E. Jimenez.[/caption]

The reason chinchillas scare easily is that being alert and being aware helps them survive in the wild. Chinchillas are prey animals, so they're always listening for predators on the prowl (hence why they have such big ears).

Being so easily frightened helps each chinchilla, and each chinchilla group, thrive. A cautious chinchilla hops straight back to its hiding place, so avoids being eaten; one that isn't will end up as prey. Plus, chinchillas can afford to be cautious because they eat both during the day and at night, and their food (grasses and shrubs) are always there. So when the predator leaves or catches something else to eat, the chinchillas can come back out and carry on eating as they were before.

Unfortunately, your chins don't know that they're completely safe in your home. As such, they retain these instincts to constantly listen out for noises and hide if something scares them.

Signs a Chinchilla Is Scared or Stressed

You can instantly tell that a chinchilla is scared, stressed, or otherwise feeling bad from its body language and behavior. Chinchillas communicate their feelings well because they live in groups in the wild, and communicating feeling helps them maintain group bonds and hierarchies. Things to look out for include:

Running away. Your chinchilla's most basic instinct is to get away from whatever frightens it.

Hiding. If there's somewhere appropriate to do so like a hide or underneath some stairs, your chinchilla will hide there.

Alarm calls. Chinchillas make loud 'alarm bark' noises when they sense something dangerous. The idea is to warn other chinchillas in the group that there's danger around. Chins do this even when they live alone.

Fighting with cage mates. Stress can make two chinchillas fight even if they're otherwise friendly.

So, if you think your chinchilla might be scared, observe it for a while. Try to think back to what might have scared it, too.

What Scares Chinchillas?

It's no problem if your chinchilla gets scared once or twice. But if your chinchilla seems to be constantly afraid of something, you ought to figure out what it is and correct it. Here is a list of the most common reasons chinchillas get scared to help.

1) Loud Noises

What scares chinchillas more than anything else is loud noise.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that hearing is the principal of your chinchilla's senses. It's very sensitive, so comes in handy when chinchillas need to hear predators approaching. They're therefore always listening for noises, and any noise your pet doesn't recognize could make it frightened. It becomes alert because the noise, so it thinks, could have been a predator coming for it.

The second reason is that your chinchilla's hearing is so sensitive that noises seem louder to it. So what might seem like a normal noise to you, like a door closing, is louder to your chinchilla. That's why chinchillas jump and start at noises you can't even hear. And just like it is for us, loud noises are more frightening for your pet. This is one of the easiest ways to accidentally frighten chinchillas.

2) Sudden Movements

Chinchillas don't like sudden movements either, for the same reason they don't like loud noises: they might signify nearby predators.

A chinchilla's eyesight isn't as sensitive as its hearing. It's blurry, similar to a short-sighted person's vision. And on top of that, chinchillas can't see color as well as we can. But all the same, if your chinchilla sees sudden movement from a source it doesn't recognize, it thinks "That might be a predator!" So, it becomes alert or runs away.

The source of this movement could be anything. If a door blows shut because of a sudden draft, for example, the sudden movement combined with the noise of it slamming would scare your pet. Movement on the TV or you waving your arms about (for whatever reason!) could scare your pet too.

3) People They Don't Know

If you're good at recognizing patterns, it won't surprise you that chinchillas can also be frightened by smelling something they're not familiar with. This can manifest itself in a few ways, but especially when your chinchilla meets somebody it doesn't know yet.

We don't fully appreciate it as our senses of smell aren't anywhere near as sensitive as the chinchilla's. But every person smells completely different! It's a combination of our sweat, our pheromones, the perfumes and colognes we wear, the soaps we use, the products we wash our hair or clothes with and so on. Your chinchilla gets used to what you smell like, so when you approach it, it uses its sense of smell to recognize you, and if it trusts you it will feel secure. But if it's approached by somebody who smells different, they'll be more wary.

4) Being Touched Unexpectedly

[caption id="attachment_661" align="alignright" width="300"] Your chinchilla may not be expecting you to pick it up.[/caption]

Chinchillas can also get scared if you touch them when they aren't expecting you to. The only sense you can't frighten them through is their sense of taste! This isn't easy to do, because your pet will hear, smell or see you coming. But it can happen when your chinchilla is asleep.

Have you ever walked over to your chinchilla's cage to give it a treat only for it to start when you make a noise, for example by opening its cage door? Or have you ever picked up your chinchilla, only for it to leap back and give you an annoyed look? Well, chinchillas take frequent sleeps throughout the day, and can sleep with their eyes open too. It may look like your chin is awake when it isn't really. By touching it while it's asleep, you (accidentally of course) scare the living daylights out of it.

5) Other Pets

Other pets like dogs or cats can also frighten your chinchilla. Again, this is because chins are prey animals, so they're wary of anything bigger than they are. They're right to be, too, because even well-behaved dogs have hunting instincts (which is why they like to play fetch and similar games).

Even other pets that aren't predators might scare or stress your chinchillas. That's because chinchillas want to keep their resources (food) to themselves. So even if your chinchilla smells something non-threatening like a rabbit it might feel stressed out.

6) My Chinchilla Is Scared of ME!

Perhaps the leading cause of owner-related stress in chinchillas is improper handling.

The only reason a chinchilla might be picked up or carried in the wild is if it's being attacked by something. So, handling by an owner can cause stress, at least if the chin doesn't trust the owner yet. And even if your chin likes you, the best it can do is tolerate rather than enjoy handling. There are several ways handling can go wrong:

Handling your chinchilla too frequently. Twice a week is fine, plus regular play time without handling on other days. You don't want your chinchilla to only associate you with handling.

Handling your chinchilla roughly. Chinchillas are delicate so don't like being squeezed, poked and so on.

Moving your chinchilla around too quickly. You could frighten your chin by moving it from hand to hand quickly, by lifting it up and down, and generally by making it feel like it's not in control of its movements.

Grabbing at your chinchilla. Again, the only reasons chins in the wild are grabbed is if by a predator. That's why grabbing causes fur slip.

Handling your chinchilla when it clearly doesn't want to be handled, e.g. if it's stressed.

On top of that, some chinchillas plain don't want to be handled—not now, not ever. You have to respect your pet's wishes if that's the case.

7) Being Chased

Chasing is a confusing issue, because in some circumstances, chinchillas can enjoy being chased. Two chinchillas can play by chasing each other, for example.

There are two problems. The first is that chinchillas that are fighting can also chase each other, or more accurately, the 'bully' can chase the other chinchilla around. This is highly stressful for the chinchilla being chased because the 'bully' could hurt its cage mate. The second is that being chased by a bigger animal reminds chinchillas of being hunted by predators.

8) Dominant Chinchillas

Your chinchilla could also be frightened of its cage mate.

Chinchillas form hierarchies in their groups, whether that group is a pairing or larger. In a pair, there is typically one chinchilla that is bigger, stronger, or just more confident than the other. This chinchilla could bully the other one. Bullying can be something like stopping the other chinchilla from eating or drinking, fur barbering, or it could be full-blown fights. But either way, the subordinate chinchilla will be scared of its cage mate.

This is especially the case if one chinchilla is much bigger than the other. It's not a problem if one chinchilla is dominant but doesn't seriously hurt the other; they can still co-exist. But if one chinchilla is much larger and consistently fights the smaller one, in the wild, the smaller one would leave the group to join another one or even live on its own. In a cage, it can't do that, so the bullying becomes worse and worse.

When this happens, the bullied chinchilla becomes very scared, even terrified. It makes horrible screaming noises that you can immediately tell are from its distress.

How Do You Calm a Chinchilla Down?

If your chinchilla is clearly frightened, you can take steps to help it. These won't instantly stop your chinchilla from being frightened any time it's scared by something; that's impossible, and it's similarly impossible to stop your chinchilla from ever being scared. But they will stop your chinchilla's skittishness from being a serious problem.

Give Your Pet a Hide

Every chinchilla cage needs a hide. A hide is like a small hut your chinchilla can retreat to any time it feels scared.

If your chinchilla doesn't have one, it will feel vulnerable. In the wild, chins find shelter in rock crevices or old abandoned burrows. When they hear noises that frighten them, they scamper back to these hidey-holes as quickly as they can to avoid capture. Your chinchilla will benefit from having a hide so that it can do the same.

Identify What's Making Your Chinchilla Scared

Beyond that, you have to figure out why your chinchilla is so scared, or is so frequently scared.

You can do this by observing your pet for a while. Sit near your chinchilla's cage without making any sudden moves or loud noises and consider the following questions:

Do your two chinchillas get along, or are they always squabbling? If so, the fighting is making your pet stressed.

Does your chinchilla frequently stop what it's doing to listen and start making alarm calls? It's hearing something, maybe something you can't, that's making it frightened.

Does your chinchilla not want to be around you? It may be frightened of you rather than anything else.

Move Your Chinchilla's Cage

Moving your chinchilla's cage to a more suitable location fixes many of these issues. Certain rooms in the home are better than others, whether because of temperature and humidity, interaction or because your chinchilla gets frequently scared there. The better rooms of the home include:

Your bedroom. Bedrooms are typically quieter than rooms like the kitchen or living room. You also get to spend lots of time with your pet each day, and if it likes you, this will ease its stress.

The basement. The basement is quieter and won't get much if any direct sunlight. While your chins shouldn't live in the dark, they shouldn't be kept in direct light either because of temperature issues.

However, don't move your chinchilla's cage without thinking carefully. Moving is, in itself, stressful for your pet. As such, you should only move its cage if you're certain that doing so will make it happier in the long run.

Leave Your Chinchilla Alone

There's a chance that you are responsible for your chinchilla's stress and skittishness. As such, it may be best for you to give it space.

New chinchillas take time to get used to their owners. There is no other animal that likes to spend time around your pet, aside from things that want to eat them. This means that handling is unnatural, and although your chinchilla can learn to tolerate it, it may not like being around you at first. You have to tread a fine line: one where you don't cause your pet too much stress by trying to handle it every day, but also one where you don't leave it alone completely so that it doesn't get used to you. So think of your pet's thoughts and feelings before you try to handle it.

Even chinchillas that trust their owners don't like being handled every day. This seems to cause stress, and makes the chinchilla associate you with nothing but handling, which is a bad thing. Giving it time on its own where it doesn't feel vulnerable, as if you'll pick it up any second, stops your chin being so easily frightened. And when you do handle or spend time with your chin, treating it kindly will help too.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

[ays_quiz id='9']

#chinchillas #chinchillafaqs

[kalimarsdreamlog]

Dream 280: Shadow and the Aquarium

Broke: dragon dream

Woke: Shadow Dream

First thing's first, I was playing that merge dragons game, except I was in the game and able to touch the dragons. One of the dragons got crushed by a rock and died. Turns out when a dragon dies, it forms a Shadow. This Shadow could only exist in shaded areas and was hurt by light. I was upset about the death of one of my dragons, but comforted my remaining baby dragon by hugging it. I couldn't remember if the shadow had a name, so I just called it Shadow. He tried to cheer me up by showing me the elements I still had, like shadow, fire, and the light of life. He accidentally hurt himself trying to show me that one.

The scene changed. Now I was at some kind of zoo that specialized as an aquarium. It had tanks the size of the Georgia aquarium. To put that into perspective, the Georgia aquarium is big enough to have multiple whale sharks. I was eavesdropping on a version of me from a parallel dimension. His name was Chaky Holden. (Btw my name was like Katie Frelem?) He was talking about all the differences between our dimensions, like Carmex hadn't rebranded and stuff like that.

I was also with my childhood friend, Savanna. We heard screaming and decided to investigate. She said it was probably Shadow's fault, since he was a being of death and darkness, but I disagreed. He had been nothing but nice when I met him. Somehow at one point on our way to the source of the scream she got stuck in one of the tanks. She swam over to the side where I was a motioned for me to do…something. I could tell she was running out of time so I went intangible, reached into the tank, and pulled her through the glass.

We went our separate ways and I called for Shadow. He appeared, though the area was pretty well-lit so I had to shield him from the light with my body. I did this by floating so I was a tad taller than him and hugging him from behind; that way if he hunched his front would be shaded too. He was more human than the last time I saw him, having actual human skin instead of being pure shadow like he was in my dragon camp.

Finally coming to the source of the scream, we saw people running from sharks. I guess the sharks were swimming through the air? Or maybe the people were somehow running underwater? I dunno. There were people in bleachers watching. The back few rows were rich people there for the spectacle, and the rest were trapped there as contestants. Below the bleachers were tunnels that were both escape points and a place that the predators dragged their prey once they were caught. I say predators because every couple of minutes there would be a new wave of animals released. The only two I remember were the sharks and crocodiles. Savanna got caught by the latter. I jumped down after her and dove into the tunnel she was dragged in, but it was so dark I couldn't see where I was going. I jumped out and back into the bleachers before I, too, got caught and eaten, enlisting Shadow to go in my stead. He would be the perfect choice for finding her in the dark tunnels. Another contestant in the audience pointed me to the right tunnel so I could show him which one to go in, and he was off.

He returned with a hairband and a scrap of fabric in his hands. "I'm sorry. These were all that was left." I could tell he expected me to be angry that he wasn't fast enough, but I wasn't. It wasn't his fault; if he couldn't save her, no one could. Instead I just gave him the biggest hug I could manage before redirecting my anger at the true culprits: the people in charge of the and the rich people spectating. I called them out on their bull and called them all sorts of names. One of the guys in charge got out a gun and said that if I didn't stop making a ruckus he'd have to shoot me, so I said, "Then shoot me." I wasn't backing down. I knew he wasn't bluffing, but at that point I knew I could turn intangible and my point was more important than appearances. The other people in charge got out guns too, and they all shot at me. Nothing hit, of course. Some other guy did something that made him a target so I stepped in front of him, realizing that if I wanted to protect him I couldn't turn intangible this time, because then he'd just get hit. I mentally apologized to Shadow as I gave my life protecting him.

The dream reset. The first thing I did upon becoming aware again was look for Shadow. He wasn't coming when I called (that makes him sound like a dog, woops) and it never mattered where he was, he always appeared when I called for him. The rumor mill was running full force when I asked around about him, and it sounded like he was in bad, bad shape. I was getting desperate.

I ended up finding him on the top bunk of a bunk bed, tied up with some kind of magic wire meant for holding him specifically, under direct light to keep him from fighting back. He was torn in half, but, being a shadow, still alive. There was no one in the room with him for the time being other than me. I cried out, "Shadow! Oh my god!" And scaled the bunkbed to get to him. I put myself between him and the light so he could start to mend himself and I could get a look at the wire holding him. At the sight of another silhouette looming over him he flinched, and I had to assure him it was me and I wasn't going to hurt him.

Right as I broke the wire the door slammed open. A rather hefty woman came in, snarling, "He's MINE! Isn't that right, darling?" Taking everything in, I finally put two and two together: this woman had had her way with Shadow. I was disgusted, but more importantly, livid. So livid, in fact, that I tore off one of the supporting bedposts and stabbed her with it. She put up a fight, but I eventually won. I helped Shadow out of there. As soon as he was out of the light, he retreated, disappearing into the shadows.

The dream shifted, taking me all the way back to when I was eavesdropping on my other-dimensional self. Somehow, I accidentally broke a pillar that was holding up the aquarium. Knowing what was about to happen, I ran for it. Behind me, tanks broke and a deluge of water was cascading from the building. I shouted at anyone I ran into to run. Outside the aquarium was the parking lot, which was all sand for some reason? It was a sunny day, and I knew that even if Shadow was all healed up I wouldn't be getting any help from him.

The cars were parked sideways. I jumped on top of them, going from car to car, because I knew a lot of them belonged to rich psychopaths who liked to watch other people run for their lives for fun. All was going relatively well until I stepped on something. It jutted into my left foot, slowing me down. Just as well; the cars were getting too far apart at this distance away from the aquarium anyway.

I saw some people getting in a car to leave and begged them to take me with them; they let me, seeing the state of my foot. I got the whole back seat to myself. Unfortunately, they took too long getting situated and we were overwhelmed by water. Sand was kicked up by the current, throwing the sunken vehicle into darkness.

Shadow appeared in the seat next to me. There was nothing he could do but keep me company, but he wanted to be there for me anyway. He told me that the lady who had tied him up was also a Frelem. I was disgusted to be related to such a monster, but it turns out, I wasn't. I was, in fact, a Holden, like Chaky from the other dimension.

All I could do was hug Shadow until the end came. The last thing I heard were my own words to Shadow, "I love you."

I was starting to wake up at this point, but I was asleep long enough to see Shadow make an agreement with a higher being to sacrifice himself to revive me. But as I became incorporeal, I wouldn't let that happen, hanging onto him as he rose into the moon and pulling him back down to me. The higher beings saw that one would not stay or go without the other, and so they made certain arrangements. We would both live, but only half the time. We would only be able to see each other at dawn and dusk, as I would only exist during the day and he would only exist during the night. It seemed unfair, but it was better than one of us dying and the other having to continue on without.

I woke up.

Guys Shadow was so handsome oh my gosh. I didn’t have time to complete the drawing but the easiest thing to remember was how well-kept his hair was, like dang. His features, like his hair, were smooth and somewhat angular. I’m not sure who to compare them to and I don’t think I did him justice, but what can you do?

Table of Contents

FAQ

[josephkitchen0]

Poultry Predator Identification

By Gail Damerow – “What are you building there, a bunker?” My visiting uncle was referring to the concrete foundation of an under-construction chicken house on our new farm. Looking at it through his eyes, maybe it was overkill. On the other hand, a neighbor had told us nothing we could do would stop predation. “Chickens just don’t live long out here,” he said.

Well, as long as we kept our flock in that “bunker,” we never lost a chicken. Oh, except for the two that disappeared one day when we let the flock out to forage while we worked in the garden. The chickens took advantage of their new-found freedom by wandering into the woods to scratch in the dry leaves. We heard a quick, loud squawk from the right and then, almost immediately, a quick, loud squawk from the left. The flock came back two short. A pair of foxes with hungry kits apparently happened along that first (and last) time we allowed the chickens to roam from their bunkered yard.

We had built that coop next to the garden near our house. We figured the chickens would be easy to care for there, and we could feed them weeds and other garden refuse. But we soon tired of the early morning crowing outside the bedroom window, so when we put up a barn some distance from the house we added a hen house to one end. We soon learned that our chicken bunker had lulled us into complacency about the local predator population. Plenty of critters are out there, seeking an opportunity to dine on homegrown poultry.

The first step to deterring predators is to identify them. Each critter has a modus operandi that serves as something of a calling card to let you know which animal you’re dealing with. Having raised chickens for nearly 40 years, I’ve seen quite a few of these signs, but every now and then I still get stumped, largely because the predators haven’t read the books and don’t always conform to their own standard procedure. One sure sign, of course, is tracks, but in an active poultry yard tracks quickly get obliterated, so you can’t count on tracks alone. Your best guide is to examine where, how, and when birds turn up dead or missing.

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Birds Missing

Missing chickens or ducks were likely carried off by a fox, coyote, dog, bobcat, owl, or hawk. One time I was working in my yard and could only watch helplessly when a hawk swooped down and carried off a full-grown banty hen that had been happily scratching in the orchard. Although we rarely lose a full-grown bird to hawks, we take great care to enclose chicks, ducklings, and goslings, as these small birds are particularly attractive to hawks and other predators.

Hawks work in the daytime; owls work at night. A band of guinea fowl that liked to roost on the utility line running to the roof of our house disappeared one by one. We began to notice that whenever we heard a sharp thump on the roof during the night, in the morning another guinea was gone. One night when we were awakened by the thump, we ran out and saw a great horned owl land near our back door. The night-time rooftop thumps continued until we convinced the remaining guineas to roost in the woodshed.

If your missing birds are ducks, and you live near water, a mink may be doing the dirty deed. Raccoons, too, will carry off a duck or chicken and may raid the poultry yard as a cooperative venture and then squabble over their kill. You may find the carcass some distance from the coop, the insides eaten and feathers scattered around.

A snake will eat chicks and ducklings without leaving a trace. I once found a black snake in our brooder after he had gulped down a couple of chicks, then (being too fat to slip back out through the wire) curled up under the heat lamp to sleep off his fine meal.

Photo by Michael Dougherty.

Domestic and feral house cats will make chicks and ducklings disappear, but leave the wings and feathers of growing birds. On rare occasions a cat will kill a mature duck or chicken, eating the meatier parts and leaving the skin and feathers, and sometimes other parts, scattered around. I learned accidentally the best way to train a cat to leave chickens alone when my new kitten followed me to the chicken yard. She took an interest in some baby chicks, whereupon the mother hen puffed up to twice her normal size and chased the kitten away. For the rest of her life, that cat laid her ears back and skulked away from any chicken that happened by.

Rats will carry off chicks or ducklings and leave older ones chewed up. I once sold a dozen ducklings to a fellow who had previously raised chickens and was fully aware of their cannibalistic tendencies. He called me to report that his ducklings were eating each other. I assured him ducklings don’t do that, and suggested he had rats, but he insisted and persisted in calling with his cannibalistic duck reports. Then one day the calls stopped. Next time I saw him I asked (with a smirk) if the last remaining duckling had eaten itself. He sheepishly admitted he had a rat problem.

When you find a bird dead inside an enclosure with its head and crop missing, your visitor was a raccoon. Photo by Michael Dougherty.

Birds Dead

Chickens or ducks found dead in the yard, but without any missing parts, were likely attacked by a dog. Dogs kill for sport. When the bird stops moving, the dog loses interest, which is why you often find the victim of a canine attack near where it was killed. I once found a dozen of my fryers dead and lined up neatly on the walkway. I was trying to guess what kind of predator could have done such a thing, when my new puppy came bounding up with yet another fryer to add to his collection.

Like dogs, weasels and their relations (ferrets, fishers, martens, mink, and so forth) also kill for sport. If you find bloodied bodies surrounded by scattered feathers, you were likely visited by one of them.

If you find dead birds that have been flattened, the only thing you know is that some kind of predator frightened them; in trying to get away, they piled in a corner or against a wall and the ones on the bottom suffocated. This sort of thing happens most commonly with turkeys. Similarly, panicked ducks may stampede and trample one another.

Tracks are not easy to find in a busy poultry yard, unless you go looking early after a rain. This track is the rear foot of a raccoon. Photos by Gail Damerow.

This track was left by a large dog; it is distinctive from a bobcat track because it is narrower than long and shows claw marks.

Parts Missing

A dead bird found inside a fenced enclosure or pen with its head missing is likely the victim of a raccoon that reached in, grabbed the bird, and pulled its head through the wire. Or a bird of prey could have frightened your birds into fluttering against the wire, and those that poked their heads through the wire lost their heads.

When you find a bird dead inside an enclosure with its head and crop missing, your visitor was a raccoon. If the head and back of the neck are missing, suspect a weasel or mink. If the head and neck are missing, and feathers are scattered near a fence post, the likely perp is a great horned owl.

Just as a raccoon will reach into a pen and pull off a chicken’s head, so will it also pull off a leg, if that’s what it gets hold of first. Dogs, too, may prowl underneath a raised pen, bite at protruding feet, and pull off legs.

Birds Bitten

If you find dead or wounded birds that have been bitten, they may have been attacked by a dog. If they are young birds and the bites are around the hock, suspect a rat. If the bites are on the leg or breast, the biter is likely an opossum. ‘Possums like tender growing birds and will sneak up to the roost while fryers are sleeping and bite a chunk out of a breast or thigh. On the rare occasion a ‘possum kills a chicken, it usually eats it on the spot.

Birds bitten around the rear end, and have their intestines pulled out, have been attacked by a weasel or one of its relatives. A hen that prolapsed may look similar, as the protruding red tissue attracts other chickens to peck, and if they peck long enough and hard enough before you intervene, they will eventually pull out her intestines. Other signs of cannibalism are missing toes and wounds around the top of the tail of growing chickens. Hens with slice wounds along their backs get them after being repeatedly mated by a sharp-clawed rooster.

Eggs Missing

Lots of predators like eggs, including rats, skunks, snakes, opossums, raccoons, crows, and jays. Rats, skunks, and snakes make off with the entire egg. Rats and skunks roll them away. One time I heard a ruckus in my goose yard and ran out to see a small skunk struggling to roll away a big goose egg with its front paws. A skunk that has been pilfering eggs will leave its odor behind. If you faintly smell skunk but find shell shards in or around the nest, the raider is more likely an old boar raccoon.

Sensing the presence of a freshly laid warm egg, Mr. T Kingsnake hoists his four feet up the wall and into the manger at the upper left. Photos by Gail Damerow.

A snake eats the egg right out of the nest. One time when I was collecting eggs from our Khaki Campbells I found a lumpy black snake curled up in one of the nests. Currently, we have a four-foot Kingsnake living in the hay storage area of our barn. We’re happy to have him clear out the rodents. We call him The Terminator (Mr. T for short) and don’t mind that he pilfers the occasional egg laid inside the barn; he won’t go into the hen house for fear of the guinea fowl that share our chickens’ quarters.

Mr. T wraps his mouth around his prize and, working his mouth back and forth over the egg, takes nearly an hour to get it down his throat.

Unable to climb back out of the manger with his muscles stretched by his fine breakfast, Mr. T curls up for a nap.

Jays, crows, ’possums, raccoons, and occasionally skunks leave tell-tale shells. Jays and crows may carry empty shells quite a distance from where they found the eggs, while a ’possum or ’coon leaves empty shells in or near the nest. Sometimes after cleaning out a nest, a bold ’possum will curl up in the nest and take a nap.

Night or Day

Most predators work at night — some in the dead of night, others at dark or dawn. Exceptions are dogs (which kill any time they get the whim), coyotes (which occasionally hunt during the day), and foxes (which prefer to hunt around dawn or dusk but will hunt during the day if game is scarce or they are feeding kits). Among flying predators, owls strike at night, hawks swoop down in daylight.

Rodents

Rats and mice are a particularly insidious type of predator. They’re everywhere, breed like rats, and can’t take a hint. They invade any time of year, but get worse during fall and winter when they move indoors seeking food and shelter. Rats eat eggs and chicks, and both rats and mice eat copious quantities of feed and spread disease. To add insult to injury, rodents gnaw holes in housing, and burrow underneath, providing entry for other predators.

Whether or not you find evidence, you can safely assume you have a rodent problem. Discourage rodents by eliminating their hide-outs, including piles of unused equipment and other scrap. Store feed in containers with tight lids and avoid or sweep up spills. Aggressive measures include getting a cat or a Jack Russell Terrier, and  —if you’ve got rats and you’re experienced with a gun — shoot ’em. Don’t bother with techie solutions like ultrasound black boxes and electromagnetic radiation — they’re as ineffective as they are expensive.

Poisoning is a last resort, as you never know if you might poison pets, children, or harmless wildlife. Besides, bait stations work only if the rodents can find no other source of feed, which is pretty unlikely in your average backyard poultry situation. Traps of various sorts are invariably messy, no matter whether they kill or trap live rodents, but are an option when all else fails.

Lots of predators like eggs, including skunks and opossums. Photos by Michael Dougherty.

Controlling Predators

The easiest and best way to protect poultry is to confine them indoors, if not all the time, at least at night. A deep concrete foundation, as our poultry bunker had, discourages digging predators. Cover all openings with fine wire mesh, and if your yard is small enough cover the top of the run as well, to keep out birds of prey. To improve ventilation during hot summer nights, we covered a stock panel with poultry netting and use it as a screen door. Year around we have a bright security light that deters some predators and lets us see better at night.

Keep grass, weeds, and brush mowed around the hen house and yard. Many four-legged creatures don’t like to expose themselves to cross an open field. A good close-mesh fence, especially electrified, will keep out most four-legged marauders. Burying the bottom of the fence with the lowest six to 12 inches bent outward (away from the poultry yard) helps deter diggers.

For pastured poultry, moving the housing every couple of days confuses predators, or at least makes them suspicious. Anchor portable housing with skirting that’s tight and close to the ground; each time you move the shelter, double check for dips where weasels can weasel in.

If you have a problem with a predator that comes back repeatedly, you might call your local wildlife or animal control agency and see if they’ll send out a trapper. Another option is to set a trap yourself. If you use a live trap with the intent of releasing the predator in some far off location, be aware that many animals are territorial and eventually find their way back home. Others come in families, so catching one marauder won’t necessarily solve your problem. And if your marauders are a family of ‘possums, think twice about exterminating them, or you’ll likely end up with a rat problem instead.

A predator-control option favored by many rural folks is to stand guard and shoot. If the marauder is your neighbor’s dog, be sure to check local laws regarding your obligation to notify the neighbor about your intentions. If the predator is a wild animal that’s protected by law, you’re back to begging the wildlife agency for help. In our area, poultry owners persistently complain about reintroduced bald eagles carrying off their chickens; the wildlife people remind us that our best defense is to protect our flocks and let the wildlife be.

I started raising poultry on a ranchette I bought because I was looking for a place where I could raise chickens, and that suburban acre came with chickens and ducks already installed. Our chief poultry predators then were dogs, rats, and ever-tightening zoning laws. Because of the latter, I now raise poultry on a farm at the end of a rural dirt road. We still contend with the occasional dog and, only rarely, rats. Instead, we see a steady and varied parade of wildlife attempting to share our birds. Because these wild animals delight us as much as attempt to frustrate our poultry-keeping efforts, and because it is we who are encroaching on their territory, we do our best to identify the source of any predation and take appropriate defensive measures to protect our flocks while letting the wildlife be.

Originally published in the August/September 2007 issue of Backyard Poultry magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.

Poultry Predator Identification was originally posted by All About Chickens

[lovemychinchilla]

What Scares Chinchillas?

Chinchillas are well known for getting stressed and scared. But what scares chinchillas, and can you help a scared chinchilla? Do you even need to?

What scares chinchillas? Chinchillas scare easily, and loud noises, sudden movements, strangers, being touched unexpectedly or being handled roughly, other pets, being chased, and fighting between cage mates can all make your chinchilla scared. To calm your chinchilla down, ensure it has a suitable cage by removing bullying cage mates and giving it somewhere to hide. Avoid handling your pet too frequently or making loud noises when you're at home. But even if you do all this, you can't stop a chinchilla getting scared sometimes.

The guide below first looks at why chinchillas get scared so easily, plus the signs to look for in a scared chinchilla. Then we'll cover what scares chins and how to fix each of them.

Do Chinchillas Get Scared Easily?

Chinchillas do get scared easily. They're skittish and can get stressed at what, to us, are normal things. While you can prevent some things that regularly frighten them, such as loud noises from the TV, your chinchilla will occasionally get spooked by things that are outside your control anyway.

Why Do Chinchillas Get Scared So Easily?

[caption id="attachment_1951" align="alignright" width="300"] Chinchillas need to listen and look for predators. Image courtesy of Jaime E. Jimenez.[/caption]

The reason chinchillas scare easily is that being alert and being aware helps them survive in the wild. Chinchillas are prey animals, so they're always listening for predators on the prowl (hence why they have such big ears).

Being so easily frightened helps each chinchilla, and each chinchilla group, thrive. A cautious chinchilla hops straight back to its hiding place, so avoids being eaten; one that isn't will end up as prey. Plus, chinchillas can afford to be cautious because they eat both during the day and at night, and their food (grasses and shrubs) are always there. So when the predator leaves or catches something else to eat, the chinchillas can come back out and carry on eating as they were before.

Unfortunately, your chins don't know that they're completely safe in your home. As such, they retain these instincts to constantly listen out for noises and hide if something scares them.

Signs a Chinchilla Is Scared or Stressed

You can instantly tell that a chinchilla is scared, stressed, or otherwise feeling bad from its body language and behavior. Chinchillas communicate their feelings well because they live in groups in the wild, and communicating feeling helps them maintain group bonds and hierarchies. Things to look out for include:

Running away. Your chinchilla's most basic instinct is to get away from whatever frightens it.

Hiding. If there's somewhere appropriate to do so like a hide or underneath some stairs, your chinchilla will hide there.

Alarm calls. Chinchillas make loud 'alarm bark' noises when they sense something dangerous. The idea is to warn other chinchillas in the group that there's danger around. Chins do this even when they live alone.

Fighting with cage mates. Stress can make two chinchillas fight even if they're otherwise friendly.

So, if you think your chinchilla might be scared, observe it for a while. Try to think back to what might have scared it, too.

What Scares Chinchillas?

It's no problem if your chinchilla gets scared once or twice. But if your chinchilla seems to be constantly afraid of something, you ought to figure out what it is and correct it. Here is a list of the most common reasons chinchillas get scared to help.

1) Loud Noises

What scares chinchillas more than anything else is loud noise.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that hearing is the principal of your chinchilla's senses. It's very sensitive, so comes in handy when chinchillas need to hear predators approaching. They're therefore always listening for noises, and any noise your pet doesn't recognize could make it frightened. It becomes alert because the noise, so it thinks, could have been a predator coming for it.

The second reason is that your chinchilla's hearing is so sensitive that noises seem louder to it. So what might seem like a normal noise to you, like a door closing, is louder to your chinchilla. That's why chinchillas jump and start at noises you can't even hear. And just like it is for us, loud noises are more frightening for your pet. This is one of the easiest ways to accidentally frighten chinchillas.

2) Sudden Movements

Chinchillas don't like sudden movements either, for the same reason they don't like loud noises: they might signify nearby predators.

A chinchilla's eyesight isn't as sensitive as its hearing. It's blurry, similar to a short-sighted person's vision. And on top of that, chinchillas can't see color as well as we can. But all the same, if your chinchilla sees sudden movement from a source it doesn't recognize, it thinks "That might be a predator!" So, it becomes alert or runs away.

The source of this movement could be anything. If a door blows shut because of a sudden draft, for example, the sudden movement combined with the noise of it slamming would scare your pet. Movement on the TV or you waving your arms about (for whatever reason!) could scare your pet too.

3) People They Don't Know

If you're good at recognizing patterns, it won't surprise you that chinchillas can also be frightened by smelling something they're not familiar with. This can manifest itself in a few ways, but especially when your chinchilla meets somebody it doesn't know yet.

We don't fully appreciate it as our senses of smell aren't anywhere near as sensitive as the chinchilla's. But every person smells completely different! It's a combination of our sweat, our pheromones, the perfumes and colognes we wear, the soaps we use, the products we wash our hair or clothes with and so on. Your chinchilla gets used to what you smell like, so when you approach it, it uses its sense of smell to recognize you, and if it trusts you it will feel secure. But if it's approached by somebody who smells different, they'll be more wary.

4) Being Touched Unexpectedly

[caption id="attachment_661" align="alignright" width="300"] Your chinchilla may not be expecting you to pick it up.[/caption]

Chinchillas can also get scared if you touch them when they aren't expecting you to. The only sense you can't frighten them through is their sense of taste! This isn't easy to do, because your pet will hear, smell or see you coming. But it can happen when your chinchilla is asleep.

Have you ever walked over to your chinchilla's cage to give it a treat only for it to start when you make a noise, for example by opening its cage door? Or have you ever picked up your chinchilla, only for it to leap back and give you an annoyed look? Well, chinchillas take frequent sleeps throughout the day, and can sleep with their eyes open too. It may look like your chin is awake when it isn't really. By touching it while it's asleep, you (accidentally of course) scare the living daylights out of it.

5) Other Pets

Other pets like dogs or cats can also frighten your chinchilla. Again, this is because chins are prey animals, so they're wary of anything bigger than they are. They're right to be, too, because even well-behaved dogs have hunting instincts (which is why they like to play fetch and similar games).

Even other pets that aren't predators might scare or stress your chinchillas. That's because chinchillas want to keep their resources (food) to themselves. So even if your chinchilla smells something non-threatening like a rabbit it might feel stressed out.

6) My Chinchilla Is Scared of ME!

Perhaps the leading cause of owner-related stress in chinchillas is improper handling.

The only reason a chinchilla might be picked up or carried in the wild is if it's being attacked by something. So, handling by an owner can cause stress, at least if the chin doesn't trust the owner yet. And even if your chin likes you, the best it can do is tolerate rather than enjoy handling. There are several ways handling can go wrong:

Handling your chinchilla too frequently. Twice a week is fine, plus regular play time without handling on other days. You don't want your chinchilla to only associate you with handling.

Handling your chinchilla roughly. Chinchillas are delicate so don't like being squeezed, poked and so on.

Moving your chinchilla around too quickly. You could frighten your chin by moving it from hand to hand quickly, by lifting it up and down, and generally by making it feel like it's not in control of its movements.

Grabbing at your chinchilla. Again, the only reasons chins in the wild are grabbed is if by a predator. That's why grabbing causes fur slip.

Handling your chinchilla when it clearly doesn't want to be handled, e.g. if it's stressed.

On top of that, some chinchillas plain don't want to be handled—not now, not ever. You have to respect your pet's wishes if that's the case.

7) Being Chased

Chasing is a confusing issue, because in some circumstances, chinchillas can enjoy being chased. Two chinchillas can play by chasing each other, for example.

There are two problems. The first is that chinchillas that are fighting can also chase each other, or more accurately, the 'bully' can chase the other chinchilla around. This is highly stressful for the chinchilla being chased because the 'bully' could hurt its cage mate. The second is that being chased by a bigger animal reminds chinchillas of being hunted by predators.

8) Dominant Chinchillas

Your chinchilla could also be frightened of its cage mate.

Chinchillas form hierarchies in their groups, whether that group is a pairing or larger. In a pair, there is typically one chinchilla that is bigger, stronger, or just more confident than the other. This chinchilla could bully the other one. Bullying can be something like stopping the other chinchilla from eating or drinking, fur barbering, or it could be full-blown fights. But either way, the subordinate chinchilla will be scared of its cage mate.

This is especially the case if one chinchilla is much bigger than the other. It's not a problem if one chinchilla is dominant but doesn't seriously hurt the other; they can still co-exist. But if one chinchilla is much larger and consistently fights the smaller one, in the wild, the smaller one would leave the group to join another one or even live on its own. In a cage, it can't do that, so the bullying becomes worse and worse.

When this happens, the bullied chinchilla becomes very scared, even terrified. It makes horrible screaming noises that you can immediately tell are from its distress.

How Do You Calm a Chinchilla Down?

If your chinchilla is clearly frightened, you can take steps to help it. These won't instantly stop your chinchilla from being frightened any time it's scared by something; that's impossible, and it's similarly impossible to stop your chinchilla from ever being scared. But they will stop your chinchilla's skittishness from being a serious problem.

Give Your Pet a Hide

Every chinchilla cage needs a hide. A hide is like a small hut your chinchilla can retreat to any time it feels scared.

If your chinchilla doesn't have one, it will feel vulnerable. In the wild, chins find shelter in rock crevices or old abandoned burrows. When they hear noises that frighten them, they scamper back to these hidey-holes as quickly as they can to avoid capture. Your chinchilla will benefit from having a hide so that it can do the same.

Identify What's Making Your Chinchilla Scared

Beyond that, you have to figure out why your chinchilla is so scared, or is so frequently scared.

You can do this by observing your pet for a while. Sit near your chinchilla's cage without making any sudden moves or loud noises and consider the following questions:

Do your two chinchillas get along, or are they always squabbling? If so, the fighting is making your pet stressed.

Does your chinchilla frequently stop what it's doing to listen and start making alarm calls? It's hearing something, maybe something you can't, that's making it frightened.

Does your chinchilla not want to be around you? It may be frightened of you rather than anything else.

Move Your Chinchilla's Cage

Moving your chinchilla's cage to a more suitable location fixes many of these issues. Certain rooms in the home are better than others, whether because of temperature and humidity, interaction or because your chinchilla gets frequently scared there. The better rooms of the home include:

Your bedroom. Bedrooms are typically quieter than rooms like the kitchen or living room. You also get to spend lots of time with your pet each day, and if it likes you, this will ease its stress.

The basement. The basement is quieter and won't get much if any direct sunlight. While your chins shouldn't live in the dark, they shouldn't be kept in direct light either because of temperature issues.

However, don't move your chinchilla's cage without thinking carefully. Moving is, in itself, stressful for your pet. As such, you should only move its cage if you're certain that doing so will make it happier in the long run.

Leave Your Chinchilla Alone

There's a chance that you are responsible for your chinchilla's stress and skittishness. As such, it may be best for you to give it space.

New chinchillas take time to get used to their owners. There is no other animal that likes to spend time around your pet, aside from things that want to eat them. This means that handling is unnatural, and although your chinchilla can learn to tolerate it, it may not like being around you at first. You have to tread a fine line: one where you don't cause your pet too much stress by trying to handle it every day, but also one where you don't leave it alone completely so that it doesn't get used to you. So think of your pet's thoughts and feelings before you try to handle it.

Even chinchillas that trust their owners don't like being handled every day. This seems to cause stress, and makes the chinchilla associate you with nothing but handling, which is a bad thing. Giving it time on its own where it doesn't feel vulnerable, as if you'll pick it up any second, stops your chin being so easily frightened. And when you do handle or spend time with your chin, treating it kindly will help too.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

[ays_quiz id='9']

#chinchillas #chinchillafaqs

[josephkitchen0]

How to Keep Rats Away From Your Urban Chicken Coop

By Maureen Mackey, Oregon – Knowing how to keep rats away is a growing concern for some chicken owners. Keeping chickens provides so many benefits, it’s no wonder many city-dwellers have installed coops in their backyards. There is no need to live on a farm to enjoy the best chicken eggs, natural pest control, and the best soil quality.

But there’s a snake in this urban Garden of Eden, and in this case it’s a furry, four-legged rodent. Like uninvited houseguests that won’t leave, rats may help themselves to your poultry hospitality if you don’t take steps to stop them. And rats pose a definite threat to chickens and their owners.

Portland, Oregon, is just one of many cities across the country that has embraced the popular trend of backyard chicken coops. And Portland has a rat problem, which makes people wonder how to keep rats away and whether chicken coops are making the problem worse.

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  Christopher Roberts, Public Health Vector Specialist for Multnomah County Vector Control in Portland, has seen a rise in complaints on his job. His office gets about 1,000 rat-related complaints a year.

“The complaints we hear most often is that, ‘My neighbor has chickens and now we have rats.’”

Roberts is quick to point out that backyard chickens don’t create a rat problem; they just provide rats that are already in the area with another opportunity for food.

“Rats don’t appear out of nowhere. In any city, the older parts are more prone to rats. They can live in well-established vegetation or they can be in the sewer.”

Doug Bridge, owner of Portland Homestead Supply Company in Portland, Oregon, would agree. He keeps a flock of chickens both in his Southeast Portland home backyard and at his store.

Raising the coop will make it much more difficult for rodents to burrow in and make the coop their home.

“In any urban setting rats are a fact of life, so the question, ‘Do chickens attract rats?’ is somewhat misleading.” He believes, the construction work on the sewers in Portland is causing a bigger rat problem than chicken coops.

Roberts has also identified a culprit for Portland’s rat woes, and it’s not chickens.

“The number one source of any rat problem is hanging bird feeders.” The next major source, he added, is backyard compost. Along with those two sources, rats are attracted to pet food, including food left out for dogs and cats, and feed for chickens or goats.

“Any source of food runs the risk of attracting rats,” Roberts added. “They need a consistent food source to establish themselves.”

Another urban haven for backyard chicken enthusiasts is Berkeley, California. Derek DiMaggio, Berkeley vector control technician, agrees with Roberts that any food source will draw rats, including pet food and birdseed.

“Birds are messy eaters — they spill their seed on the ground, and this creates an accumulated buffet. If rats become used to this food source it can become an on-going problem.”

Feeding your flock inside the enclosed run, and not outside, can help prevent accidentally providing a food source for rodents, too. Photos courtesy of Multnomah County Vector Control, Portland, Oregon

DiMaggio says he’s seen rats that have easy access to a food source become acclimatized to their surroundings and as a result very relaxed — almost like domesticated pets. And chicken coops can provide a very convenient food source for rodents.

“A chicken coop can be a big problem depending on how it’s kept,” said DiMaggio. “If it’s not properly constructed and rodent-proof, it can actually cause rodent activity during the day.” Seeing rats during the day is unusual, he added, since these wary creatures are usually active only at night.

Typically, rodent invaders are either roof rats, or more commonly, their larger and more aggressive cousin the Norway rat. These rodents can enter a structure through a hole no bigger than a quarter. Norway rats, in particular, are likely to be present if there is a problem with the sewers, especially broken pipes, which is common in the sewer systems of older cities.

Evidence of a rat presence in your home includes scraping sounds in your walls, scratches and/or greasy rub marks (from a rat’s oily fur) on wood or painted surfaces, and burrows in the ground next to your coop or near a home’s foundation. Rats will often dig both an entry and exit hole and their holes are round and smooth. A burrow or hole adjacent to a sidewalk or in a front lawn or parking strip usually indicates a Norway rat that’s dug up to the surface from a cracked sewer line.

Chicken owners that don’t know how to keep rats away will know pretty quickly if they have a rodent problem if they observe rat droppings in their coops, particularly near the feeders. Worst-case scenario, they may see their birds attacked or eggs eaten.

While the idea of rats attacking chickens is upsetting, rodents aren’t the predators that city chicken owners like Bridge worry most about.

“Dogs have been our number one chicken predator by far, and we have lost chickens to hawks, raccoons, and opossums,” Bridge said. ”In our decade of having chickens at home and at our store, we’ve never had an issue with rats disturbing our chickens.”

Bridge’s chief method of dealing with any predator is a simple one. “We lock our chickens in every night. This is the most important predation control we do. We do let our chickens range in the yard and around our business during the daylight hours.”

But predation isn’t the only headache rats can create for urban chicken owners. Public health and safety are other concerns. Rats can cause expensive structural damage and contaminate food and areas where food is grown or prepared.

Rats who are filching food from your chickens could translate to rats seeking shelter in your home and that’s very bad news. Rodents have been known to cause house fires by gnawing on electrical wires and plugs, not to mention in-house flooding by biting through the flexible water pipes that connect to dishwashers and sinks.

Rats rarely go beyond 300 feet of their burrows or nests, making it convenient for them to take shelter in one place, such as a home’s basement or crawlspace, and get food somewhere else — like you or your neighbor’s adjacent chicken coop.

According to the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management findings, Norway rats can cover a circular area of about 100 to 150 feet in diameter when they are on the prowl for food and water.

As Roberts put it, “Rats don’t care about property lines.”

Another reason to learn how to keep rats away is that they can carry serious diseases, including salmonella, leptospirosis and murine typhus. And then there’s that bane of the Middle Ages, the plague. Though the incidence is rare, humans can still contract this disease via the bite of a rat flea. The possibility of an outbreak exists if the rat population increases, warns Berkeley’s Environmental Health Division on its website.

The University of California’s research shows that just one well-fed female Norway rat can produce about four to six litters a year. Plus, she can wean 20 or more of those offspring every year, too. Multiply those numbers by the females in a large colony of rats and you can see the potential for explosive population growth.

So, what’s the best way to repel rats from your city chickens?

“In my experience, it all depends on your coop design,” said Bridge. A lot of chicken coop plans are made to keep chickens in, not rats and other predators out.

Roberts recommends enclosing your entire coop with ¼-inch steel hardware cloth, and sinking or burying that cloth into the ground one foot deep and another foot extending out from the structure. He cautioned against using traditional chicken wire because mice and small rats can fit through it and larger rats can dig under it.

Bridge learned how to keep rats away through hard experience.

“My first coop was on the ground, and I lined the bottom with chicken wire rather than hardware wire. Within a year, the rats had successfully tunneled through the flimsy chicken wire. I built my last coop two feet off the ground to make cleaning far easier via a drop floor, and have seen no evidence of rats in or around this coop.”

Another important step for how to keep rats away from your flock is cleaning up after feedings and controlling seed spillage. Putting birds on a feeding schedule helps, too.

Cities like Portland and Berkeley offer free rodent inspections and advice to coop owners. Part of DiMaggio’s job is to talk to backyard chicken owners about rodent harborage and the attendant health hazards, and to inform them about city statutes.

To avoid paying a fine or being required to relocate your coop or remove it altogether, it pays to research city code regulations and enforcement. For example, city laws may require a coop to be built anywhere from 15 to 40 feet or even farther from a neighboring structure. Codes also address the number and type of birds allowed.

Once you’re in compliance with your local municipal codes, here are a few additional tips to deal with a rat problem or prevent one from developing:

• Design a coop that rats can’t enter or tunnel under — or better yet, if possible, build one that’s free standing. • Store all food in gnaw-proof containers. •  Discontinue open feeding and put your birds on a feeding schedule. And if you do notice evidence of rats, put chicken feeders away every night.

These steps should help keep your coop rat-free and make sure you and your birds stay healthy and happy.

Now that you have some ideas on how to keep rats away from your coop, what changes will you have to make, if any?

  How to Keep Rats Away From Your Urban Chicken Coop was originally posted by All About Chickens

[josephkitchen0]

Keep Rats Out of Your Urban Chicken Coop

By Maureen Mackey, Oregon

Keeping chickens provides so many benefits, it’s no wonder many city-dwellers have in-stalled coops in their backyards. There is no need to live on a farm to enjoy having fresh, wholesome eggs to eat, improved soil quality and natural pest control.

But there’s a snake in this urban Garden of Eden, and in this case it’s a furry, four-legged rodent. Like uninvited houseguests that won’t leave, rats may help themselves to your poultry hospitality if you don’t take steps to stop them. And rats pose a definite threat to chickens and their owners.

Portland, Oregon, is just one of many cities across the country that has embraced the popular trend of backyard chicken coops. And Portland has a rat problem, which makes people wonder whether chicken coops are making the problem worse.

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Christopher Roberts, Public Health Vector Specialist for Multnomah County Vector Control in Portland, has seen a rise in complaints on his job. His office gets about 1,000 rat-related complaints a year.

“The complaints we hear most often is that, ‘My neighbor has chickens and now we have rats.’”

Roberts is quick to point out that backyard chickens don’t create a rat problem; they just provide rats that are already in the area with another opportunity for food.

“Rats don’t appear out of nowhere. In any city the older parts are more prone to rats. They can live in well-established vegetation or they can be in the sewer.”

Doug Bridge, owner of Portland Homestead Supply Company in Portland, Oregon, would agree. He keeps a flock of chickens both in his Southeast Portland home backyard and at his store.

Raising the coop will make it much more difficult for rodents to burrow in and make the coop their home.

“In any urban setting rats are a fact of life, so the question, ‘Do chickens attract rats?’ is somewhat misleading.” He believes, the construction work on the sewers in Portland is causing a bigger rat problem than chicken coops.

Roberts has also identified a culprit for Portland’s rat woes, and it’s not chickens.

“The number one source of any rat problem is hanging bird feeders.” The next major source, he added, is backyard compost. Along with those two sources, rats are attracted to pet food, including food left out for dogs and cats, and feed for chickens or goats.

“Any source of food runs the risk of attracting rats,” Roberts added. “They need a consistent food source to establish themselves.”

Another urban haven for backyard chicken enthusiasts is Berkeley, California. Derek DiMaggio, Berkeley vector control technician, agrees with Roberts that any food source will draw rats, including pet food and birdseed.

“Birds are messy eaters — they spill their seed on the ground, and this creates an accumulated buffet. If rats become used to this food source it can become an on-going problem.”

Feeding your flock inside the enclosed run, and not outside, can help prevent accidentally providing a food source for rodents, too. Photos courtesy of Multnomah County Vector Control, Portland, Oregon

DiMaggio says he’s seen rats that have easy access to a food source become acclimatized to their surroundings and as a result very relaxed — almost like domesticated pets. And chicken coops can pro-vide a very convenient food source for rodents.

“A chicken coop can be a big problem depending on how it’s kept,” said DiMaggio. “If it’s not properly constructed and rodent-proof, it can actually cause rodent activity during the day.” Seeing rats during the day is unusual, he added, since these wary creatures are usually active only at night.

Typically, rodent invaders are either roof rats, or more commonly, their larger and more aggressive cousin the Norway rat. These rodents can enter a structure through a hole no bigger than a quarter. Norway rats, in particular, are likely to be present if there is a problem with the sewers, especially broken pipes, which is common in the sewer systems of older cities.

Evidence of a rat presence in your home includes scraping sounds in your walls, scratches and/or greasy rub marks (from a rat’s oily fur) on wood or painted surfaces, and burrows in the ground next to your coop or near a home’s foundation. Rats will often dig both an entry and exit hole and their holes are round and smooth. A burrow or hole adjacent to a sidewalk or in a front lawn or parking strip usually indicates a Norway rat that’s dug up to the surface from a cracked sewer line.

Chicken owners will know pretty quickly if they have a rodent problem if they observe rat droppings in their coops, particularly near the feeders. Worst-case scenario, they may see their birds attacked or eggs eaten.

While the idea of rats attacking chickens is upsetting, rodents aren’t the predators that city chicken owners like Bridge worry most about.

“Dogs have been our number one predator by far, and we have lost chickens to hawks, raccoons, and a possum,” Bridge said. ”In our decade of having chickens at home and at our store, we’ve never had an issue with rats disturbing our chickens.”

Bridge’s chief method of dealing with any predator is a simple one. “We lock our chickens in every night. This is the most important predation control we do. We do let our chickens range in the yard and around our business during the daylight hours.”

But predation isn’t the only headache rats can create for urban chicken owners. Public health and safety are other concerns. Rats can cause expensive structural damage and contaminate food and areas where food is grown or prepared.

Rats who are filching food from your chickens could translate to rats seeking shelter in your home and that’s very bad news. Rodents have been known to cause house fires by gnawing on electrical wires and plugs, not to mention in-house flooding by biting through the flexible water pipes that connect to dishwashers and sinks.

Rats rarely go beyond 300 feet of their burrows or nests, making it convenient for them to take shelter in one place, such as a home’s basement or crawlspace, and get food somewhere else — like you or your neighbor’s adjacent chicken coop.

According to the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management findings, Norway rats can cover a circular area of about 100 to 150 feet in diameter when they are on the prowl for food and water.

As Roberts put it, “Rats don’t care about property lines.”

Rats can also carry serious diseases, including salmonella, leptospirosis and murine typhus. And then there’s that bane of the Middle Ages, the plague. Though the incidence is rare, humans can still contract this disease via the bite of a rat flea. The possibility of an outbreak exists if the rat population increases, warns Berkeley’s Environmental Health Division on its website.

The University of California’s research shows that just one well-fed female Norway rat can produce about four to six litters a year. Plus, she can wean 20 or more of those offspring every year, too. Multiply those numbers by the females in a large colony of rats and you can see the potential for explosive population growth.

So, what’s the best way to keep big city rats away from your city chickens?

“In my experience, it all depends on your coop design,” said Bridge. A lot of chicken coops are made to keep chickens in, not rats and other predators out.

Roberts recommends enclosing your entire coop with ¼-inch steel hardware cloth, and sinking or burying that cloth into the ground one foot deep and another foot extending out from the structure. He cautioned against using traditional chicken wire, because mice and small rats can fit through it and larger rats can dig under it.

Bridge learned this lesson through hard experience.

“My first coop was on the ground, and I lined the bottom with chicken wire rather than hardware wire. Within a year, the rats had successfully tunneled through the flimsy chicken wire. I built my last coop two feet off the ground to make cleaning far easier via a drop floor, and have seen no evidence of rats in or around this coop.”

Another important step in keeping rats away from your flock is cleaning up after feedings and controlling seed spill-age. Putting birds on a feeding schedule helps, too.

Cities like Portland and Berkeley offer free rodent inspections and advice to coop owners. Part of DiMaggio’s job is to talk to backyard chicken owners about rodent harborage and the attendant health hazards, and to inform them about city statutes.

To avoid paying a fine or being required to relocate your coop or remove it altogether, it pays to research city code regulations and enforcement. For example, city laws may require a coop to be built anywhere from 15 to 40 feet or even farther from a neighboring structure. Codes also address the number and type of birds allowed.

Once you’re in compliance with your local municipal codes, here are a few additional tips to deal with a rat problem or prevent one from developing:

• Design a coop that rats can’t enter or tunnel under — or better yet, if possible, build one that’s free standing. • Store all food in gnaw-proof containers. •  Discontinue open feeding and put your birds on a feeding schedule. And if you do notice evidence of rats, put chicken feeders away every night.

These steps should help keep your coop rat-free and make sure you and your birds stay healthy and happy.

Maureen Mackey writes from  Beaverton, Oregon.

Keep Rats Out of Your Urban Chicken Coop was originally posted by All About Chickens