Pet Chinchilla

Everybody meet Suri the Chinchilla! She is our new pet in the house (we are pet-sitting for the summer) and since my landlord is on vacation I am in charge of this little critter. After my disastrous encounter with mice I vowed never to get a stupid pet again. At first I thought this furry looking rabbit/squirrel is pretty dumb because all it does it sleep in its cage. Well it has proven me wrong and for the entire week it has managed to escape from its play area and I have to be on knees or lying on the floor at 7am trying to lure her with raisins to get her back to her cage. This little critter has some attitude and runs on a pretty rigorous schedule. If I don’t let her out she will run around her cage till the whole house wakes up and if I let her out at a random time she will just sleep and not even pay attention to the open door.
I am really surprised that even though it is so chubby looking most of it is fluff. It is highly agile and is very difficult to catch. Suri can jump up to 1m (or 3ft in imperial) and get on window sills to get around the barriers that we have setup. She can run along walls and do funny bounces on corners to try to find a weak point to get out. At first it was funny to see Suri peeking into my room, jumping on my bed or wandering in the hallway but very soon I found out it would take at least 20 min for her to get into her cage (leaving her alone would mean cables being chewed up). The most cruel idea I have after spending 30min chasing her around the couch consists of a collar, length of rope, and a peg in the middle of the room. Go figure…