Hi guys!

Welcome to Animal Wonders. I'm Jessi, and we just rescued a brand new animal, yesterday, actually and so I thought you guys might enjoy getting to know how it goes from the very beginning. [Intro music].

I don't know if you can see him right now, but he's hanging out in his hut right there, and he's just kinda getting to know his new situation. He's so new that he doesn't even have a name yet, so if you have an idea come to you while you're watching this video, put it in the comments below. Alright i'm going to open this up and see if we can get him to come on out and interact a little bit. "Hey bubbas... wanna come say hi?" So you can see he's a chinchilla. "Hi buddy" And he is a little nervous because, you know, he doesn't know me.

In the beginning, when we first get an animal, they just have to have a warming up period, and get to know that I'm not going to hurt him. He's a little confused that I took his hut away. Alright i'm moving his hut because he came with that and that's the only thing he's really comfortable with.

I actually want to get him moving around more than he wants to, because I don't know if you can tell, but he's overweight and that's a pretty serious issue for chinchillas. See how rotund he is and how his tail doesn't quite seem to match up with the size of his body. He's scheduled to see the vet in the next couple of days and she's going to run some tests to check out all of his organs.

Being obese for a chinchilla can have some serious side effects including liver, kidney, or heart disease. He also has a pretty nasty respiratory infection, so he's gonna get some antibiotics to help clear that up. So one of the things that I can do while we're waiting to see the vet is to give him lots of things to start interacting with.

So I've gotten lots of toys and a nice large enclosure with many ramps in it, to just get him moving around. I'd also like to make sure that he's running on his wheel... spinning wheel like that, because exercise is going to be the main thing that helps bring down his weight. You can see that he likes his hut a lot. "Yay good job buddy!" I'm glad to see him using his upper levels, that's going to be excellent for him.

He also likes to hide. Now, granted, we have a very large light and a camera in here as well, but he is an older chinchilla, he's reported to be about four years old, so I don't know what has gone on in his past, but it's gonna take him a little while to get comfortable in his new home. Now the reason that we rescued him what because we went into a local pet store to pick up some animal food and he had just recently been dropped in their laps.

He was older and he was obviously sick, so the chances of him finding a suitable home was pretty slim, so we wanted to take him in and give him the best life we possibly could. We have him in quarantine and that will last a month past a clean bill of health. So he's going to go to the vet, he's gonna get checked out and then hopefully, in the next couple months he's going to do the next exciting thing.

We're hoping that he becomes the companion to our other chinchilla Cheerio. We've had Cheerio for about a year now, and I've always hoped that she would get more social interaction and here's our chance to provide that for her. He needed a home and she's alone so I'm hoping that they'll get along.

When we rescue an animal there's a lot of "I don't know, let's wait and see!" but I think that's kind of the fun of the challenge of rescuing the animals, because I have a lot of base knowledge on how to provide them a good home, but each of them is an individual and they do things that I'm not expecting which is exciting as well. So it's only been a day since I met this guy and he's showing me all of his little quirks and it's gonna be really fun getting to know who he is over the next couple months. So I've already noticed that he's quite unique for a chinchilla.

He really enjoys being petted, he'll come over and relax into it, and then he'll get really upset and chirp at you and then he'll come back and ask for more pets. He's also quite curious and sociable but he enjoys his alone time as well, so he's kind of a contradictory little guy and he's gonna be really fun to get to know. All right I think he's telling us that he's had enough interaction for the time being, so we're gonna leave him alone and let him just relax for a bit.

If you have any suggestions for names, leave them in the comments below, and if you have any questions about rescuing a new animal or chinchillas in particular, leave those questions in the comments below as well. If you'd like to go on an adventure with us every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel Animal Wonders Montana, and we'll see you next week. [Outro music] The stick insects are masters of disguise. Not only do they look like a stick, when they fall to the ground they completely freeze.