Hi guys.  Today, we're gonna hang out with Kizmit the African crested porcupine, because she is just growing so fast and I didn't want you to miss it.

(Intro)

Kizzie's about five to six months old right now and she's going to just keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger.  This is still very much baby size.  She's gonna get about 24 to 33 inches long and her quills are gonna get about 24 inches long and high.  She's gonna be massive.  So right now, it's really fun just to hang out with little Kizmit even though she looks a lot bigger than the last time you saw her.  

We have been doing a lot of just hanging out with her, giving her lots of treats, touching her when we can.  She has been doing a couple presentations so she's getting used to that lifestyle as an ambassador, and she's just doing fantastic.  I like to spend a lot of time with her willingly coming to me and being on me here so that she realizes that totally I'm not a threat at all.  Lots of good things happen when she's with us.  Good girl.  You can see that she's not afraid of touch.  She's very confident, which is perfect for an ambassador.  

Her favorite foods right now are yam, carrot, and sweet potato.  You might be able to hear her rattle a little bit.  She has these really cool quills on her tail here that are hollow and they'll rattle when she's a little upset and she's not upset with me.  What she--well, I guess you could kind of say she's upset with me, but really, these guys are very food-possessive, and so when she's eating and anyone is near her, she's gonna be a little bit irritated, saying this is my food, this is my food, stay away. 

So as she's eating, I'm gonna keep trying to touch her on her forehead just to let her know that I really, I don't care about the food at all.  Food is all yours.  Good girl, Kizzie.  Yeah.  I just love watching her eat.  It's just so cute.  I love how she holds her food and she's so robust.  I just, I just love how healthy she is. 

I do like to spend a lot of one-on-one time with Kizzie but she does live with a group of social rodents, Chili Pepper the Patagonian cavy and several guinea pigs.  They all like hanging out together, which is really good for her mental state and her activity level, because they do play with each other, they groom each other, they communicate.  Good girl.  So when she's not hanging out with us, she still has a lot of friends. 

They're getting along really well and we didn't really know if that was going to happen when we first introduced them.  It was kind of iffy in the beginning.  Chili Pepper wasn't too sure about her and she was kinda on guard all the time, but after a couple weeks, they figured each other out.  Get that grape.  And now, they're really good buds.  Are you happy girl?  What do you think?  Can you show me a circle?  Go in a circle.  No.  Yeah, right there.  Circle.   Good girl.  

We've also started training Kizmit just so we can have some fun things to do while we're interacting.  One challenge that we did come across was that these quills stick out pretty far and normally they would come out a little bit farther than this.  During the grooming process, Chili Pepper has kind of over groomed some of these quills.  That's not something that he would have on his body, so he's going, what is this?  Maybe it needs to be groomed, and it doesn't hurt her, it's just an aesthetic thing, so I'm hoping as she grows bigger, he'll do less and less of that.  

So you can see as we spend more time out during this session, she becomes more and more trusting that I'm not gonna take the food away from her and she tolerates a lot more touching on her forehead and crest.  These guys can live a good 15 years, so establishing a strong trust bond now is just going to have so many positive rewards throughout the rest of her life.  What do you think?  Where's that food?  Give me more food!  Huh.  It's up here.  I know you know where it is now.  Yeah.  Here.  Here you go.  

I hope you enjoyed hanging out with us and seeing Kizzie at this stage in her life.  She's gonna continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger and if you would like to join us on an adventure every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel AnimalWondersMontana.  Thanks and we'll see you next week.

(Outro/Credits)

I have some shredded cheese here and I'm gonna place it on the stool and then tell Ruby it's not for her.  Uh-uh.  Uh-uh.  I'm gonna help her out a little bit by telling her to sit and stay while I leave the room.