~ The Story of Little Earl ~
I’ve always been a sucker for Cinderella stories, and this one is no different. Back in August 2001, I was browsing the web and read about a rescue going on in Denton, Texas. An old man who owned a fur farm had a terminal illness and decided he had to close up shop. Talk about kharma! He put an ad in the paper offering “hundreds of chinchillas for sale.”
Janie and Audie, two very industrious young ladies (or should we say Fairy Godmothers?), read the ad and responded. They knew if these fuzzy faces didn’t find homes, they would be killed for their pelts. Not a very pleasant thought, especially for two people who love their own chinnies as much as Janie and Audie.
Even more unpleasant were the conditions they found the chins living in. Two filthy metal sheds in the rancher’s backyard; one for pelting and one for breeding. The cages were tiny, there was no air conditioning in the summer (imagine being stuck in a metal shed under a Texas sun in summer with a fur coat on), and only one shed had heat from a dying space heater in the winter. There were cobwebs everywhere, old food caked into the bowls, algae in the water bottles… an unbearable environment for any living being. It's amazing they survived really.
Posts were made on the Internet and word spread like a grass fire about the Texas Chin Rescue. The rancher said Audie and Janie only had a couple months to come up with several thousand dollars if they wanted the animals. This was no small undertaking and many times the outcome looked grim. Audie didn’t give up though and hearts all over the nation went out to these little guys, including my own.
We already had Zeus & Odie and I found I was so allergic to their dust I was having asthma attacks. I resigned myself to using inhalers for as long as they lived because I would not give them up, but I knew it wouldn’t be wise to add to the problem by taking in more fuzzies. (Yeah, I know... I have five now! Apparently chinitis is more dangerous than asthma.) I sent a monetary donation to help the rescue, but I was kept awake many nights after that thinking about how they kill those chins for the pelts... it's really sickening and not humane at all. I couldn't just give money and turn away. I offered my help in organizing shipment and delivery of some of the rescues to new homes in the Northeastern United States, and I donated even more in supplies and food. Through email and phone calls I managed to get commitments for five of the chins. It didn’t seem like much, but it was five less that would die.
In the meantime, Audie had succeeded in raising the funds necessary to buy the entire herd from the rancher. She went to pick them up with a couple horse trailers and some friends. Once they got them all safely back to her barn, Audie and her crew started cataloging each chin… weighing them, taking pictures, and posting the information on the Net so it was easier for people to pick which ones they wanted to adopt.
Surprisingly, most of the chins were basically healthy. There were a few though with physical challenges - three were missing a leg, and one was missing an ear. Names were not being given to each and every chin, but the one without the ear was affectionately dubbed “Earl S” because if you say it right (particularly if you’re from Texas) it sounds like “ear-less.”
Earl S. was just a baby and it was determined that the missing ear was caused by a genetic defect. This made him a non-candidate for breeding, and also made him hard to place in a home as most people want pets that look “normal.”
Audie posted what she knew about Earl on her website. He was only a few months old and had lived in the pelting house on the bottom rack with several other cages stacked above him. I'm sure it was dark, and probably damp. Since the conditions were anything but sanitary, excrement from the cages above had dropped into Earl’s environment on a daily basis and made his fur smelly and rough, not the silky-soft texture chins normally have. Audie was willing to keep Earl as a permanent resident in the “chinnie retirement section” of her own ranch, but it would mean he would have to be neutered.
Thinking about what this little guy had already been through in his few shorts months of life and the pain the neutering may cause him made me incredibly sad. I know it’s a general procedure and I was confident Audie trusted her vet, but I couldn’t get over it. I finally decided that despite the asthma, I was going to offer Little Earl a home so he wouldn’t have to suffer any more indignities ever again. Since my other chins are both boys and I have no interest in breeding anything, there would be no problem of his genetic defect continuing in a bloodline, and he would not have to be neutered.
I contacted Audie and told her if Earl was still looking for a home at the time the other five shipped to the Northeast, then to put him on the flight as well. She graciously agreed.
Little Earl Arrives in New Jersey
The flight was planned for November 21st, the day before Thanksgiving. My mother was in town for the holiday and was not exactly thrilled that I would be gone an entire day while she was here for a visit. I had not mentioned to her or my daughter yet that we would soon have an addition to the family because I knew she would be upset about the asthma issue. Moms are like that.
Newark Airport is the closest one to where I live, but my friend Aimee had been working on coordinating a rescue of several hedgehogs in the Philadelphia area so we asked Audie to fly the chins into Philly instead.
We left bright and early that Wednesday morning with Starbucks in hand, and a video camera just for fun. It was a 2 ½ hour drive to Philadelphia and we wanted to get the chinnies off the plane as soon as they arrived, so we made sure to be there before the flight. We made fantastic time and had no issues with weather or traffic. Everything just seemed to flow.
The plane arrived and we had a bit of wait time until they were brought to the cargo area. Finally, the paperwork was presented, I paid their plane fare and we were ushered into the back to retrieve our rescues. I can’t even describe the adrenaline rush. I was so thrilled that we had actually succeeded in getting them across the country unharmed, and here they were in my care with no worries of pelters to ever darken their lives again. :) Knowing the others were all safe as well was a huge relief, and allowed me to focus all my attention on getting these six babies happily settled into their new homes.
Each compartment of the crate was marked with the name of the person receiving the chin, and above the last window on the end, the label said “Earl S.” I peered into the mesh screen and a fuzzy face with chewed off whiskers came up to greet me. His little pink nose moved so fast! The other chinnies didn’t have much interest in us as we looked in on them. I think they were so stressed from the flight they didn’t care whose face was in front of theirs, but Earl S. was curious right from the start. He was just taking it all in - a chinnie on an adventure!
We returned to Aimee’s Explorer and offered a drink, a raisin, and words of comfort to everyone. We explained that we still had a long car ride to take, but then everyone would get out of the crate into much nicer accomodations. Earl was the only one interested in what we were saying. The nose appeared through the hole in the lid again and again, always twitching curiously.
The lady with the hedgehogs arrived shortly and we loaded them into the truck as well. You’ve never seen a vehicle so full of animals before. We laughed over what we would tell the cops if we were stopped, especially since hedgehogs are illegal in PA now (the whole reason we were transporting them out of there).
It was a long, but easy drive up to our meeting point on Route 80 where we dropped off three of the chins and one of the hedgehogs to Tammy in Central PA. We then drove the 2 hours back to our neck of the woods and unloaded the remainder of the animals into Aimee’s apartment. In all, we - or rather, Aimee - had driven 12 hours that day, but it went so well we were still as bouncy as Earl when we got home.
Aimee kept Little Earl and the other two chins for me a couple days until my mother left so she wouldn’t know that he was going to live with us. It was really hard to leave him with her that night, but I knew they were all in good hands. I can imagine they were all just grateful to be on solid ground again.
Earl Settles In
The holiday ended, my mother went home and I announced to Katy, my daughter, that Earl was ours and would not be leaving with the other two chins when they went to their new home in December. (That was the story I had been giving everyone.) She was very excited to say the least. We always have a “just in case” cage, so we set it up for Earl with a wooden house (donated by Aimee), a leapin ledge, some toys, a food bowl, and a water bottle. Even though we considered it to be a small cage, I’m sure Earl must’ve thought it was the Taj Mahal. He hopped around investigating everything twice. Then he did this funny thing where he’d hop up on the roof of the house and turn his head to chew the bars. He would keep turning and turning until he flipped himself all the way over, then he’d sit up and look at us waiting for our applause. I have no clue what he was doing, but it was so funny to watch, we were in tears laughing. This little guy had the most positive personality I’ve ever seen.
The ear situation was not nearly as bad as I had expected… the ear just simply wasn’t there. We found out later from the vet that the inner ear exists, so we think he can hear just fine (although sometimes when he’s doing something naughty he claims he can’t hear us calling him!). The outer lobe is the only part missing. His fur covered the hole, so it just looked like a slight bump on his head where the ear should be.
I intended for Earl to live with our other two chins (Odin & Zeus) in their cage, but Odin would have no part of that. Every time I would try to get them near each other Odin would go nuts trying to bite Earl. Earl was still just a baby and didn’t seem to understand why he was being rejected by these older chins– after all, he had lived in that shed with lots of other chins and they didn’t mind him a bit. I’m sure he was lonely.
I let Earl out to play with the other two rescue chins we were chinsitting until December, but I still worried what would happen when they had to leave and Earl would have no more playmates. His cage sat behind my desk in the office so I could give him attention during the day while I worked, but I knew that wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to see his happy bouncy chinitude go sour. He just had such a positive outlook on everything – even those spoiled fuzzy brats that didn’t like him. I know several humans that would do well to take a cue from Earl.
I had many long talks with all three of them trying to make it work, but I finally gave in and admitted that it wasn’t going to happen. Earl was breaking my heart with how much he wanted to play with the other chins so I knew I couldn’t make him live alone. After much deliberation I decided Earl would just have to have a friend and I’d have to find another way to be healthy in the same house with them. I bought air purifiers and a closed-in cat litter box for them to have their dust baths in (which didn’t help as much as I’d hoped), and kept my eyes open for another rescue on the message boards.
Earl Finds a Friend
A couple weeks went by then Tammy, the same lady we had dropped off some of the Texas rescues to, came up with a family of seven inbred chins that were rescued from a home of neglect. One of them was eight years old, and would therefore be tough to place in a new home. I said to Earl, "Sounds like our kinda guy!" Earl and I climbed into the car and trekked on out to the meeting place on Route 80 to see if this could be his new friend. He never stopped poking his nose through the bars of the carrier for the entire ride.
Tammy didn’t think Earl was getting along with the older chin well enough, although I found it hard to tell anything through the bars of a carrier cage in a Burger King parking lot. However, since she had more experience with chins than I did, I deferred to her opinion and she tried putting Earl with a younger relative she had brought along (later named Eddie). Eddie was roughly the same age and seemed to tolerate Earl’s bounciness and domineering ways a little better than the older one. We ended up taking both chins home, but only Eddie stayed with us. The older chin, Gandalf, lived with Aimee until he died of unknown causes several months later. Ironically, I ended up transporting six of those seven inbred chins to their new homes in three separate trips.
Earl’s temporary cage was too small for two chins, so we purchased new gigantic cages on wheels for both pairs. Six levels spanning four feet in height to hop around on, a Leo Braun wheel that Earl uses more for sleeping than running, and all the wooden toys they can chew. His favorite toy has three square wooden blocks with a round sphere in the middle and a bell on the bottom. When he chews it, it sounds like he’s ringing the bell to get the butler’s attention. He’ll stop every so often and wait to see if one of us will appear with a treat, then go one ringing the bell if we don’t. I’m sure Earl must view their new home as a palace, especially considering the tiny cage he lived in back at the pelter’s ranch.
And They Lived Happily Ever After
Earl often tells me what a happy chin he is with a look that only Earl can give – he sits up straight, looks right at you with the one ear sticking up, and flicks the muscles where the other ear should be as if he didn’t even know it wasn’t there. He waits for you to laugh then bounces over to pounce on Eddie or stick his nose through the bars begging for a treat. Eddie does a pretty good impression of Earl sometimes, folding his one ear down and leaving the other sticking up – I swear he does it on purpose as a joke.
Little Earl is not so little anymore… he's filled out to 612 grams, our second biggest fuzzybutt. He’s also the only chin I’ve ever seen that actually has cheeks, and you just want to pinch them! Long beautiful whiskers grace his face now, and his standard grey fur became soft and smooth with the right diet and plenty of dust baths. Never content to sit still in your arms, he’s always squirming away to explore new things.
If I found a genie in a bottle and was granted one wish, I would wish for all animals on this planet (including humans) to catch the Earl Attitude.
Update ~ November 14, 2003
Earl & Eddie are two and a half years old now and still get along famously in their chinnie mansion. Eddie seems to have become the somewhat dominant one, often barking when Earl grooms him too roughly, or when they're sleeping and someone squirms. Earl is still the first one to the ledge for treats when you rattle the container though, and he's taught Eddie to be quite the chow hound as well. I always ask him where he puts it all and he says "in my curly tail mom!" Earl topped out at 700+ grams and rarely misses a meal. In fact, every day between 2:00-2:30pm he comes to the food bowl and gets his "midnight snack." Little Earl is not so little anymore, but he's still got the chinnitude that wins hearts in an instant. Who can resist those cheeks when he grins up at you with the one good ear sticking up and the whiskers going crazy? Not me, that's for sure!