Happy May!
For the month of April, eight (8) chinchillas were surrendered, and six (6) chinchillas were adopted. One chinchilla kit was born of a surrendered female and six females just completed their pregnancy watch without babies. Whoo hoo!
We are still dealing with overflow surrenders here where our current chin count has exploded back up to triple digits. We have exactly 100 chinchillas currently, with about half of those available for adoption right now.
Rescue work is an interesting lifestyle. Sometimes people jump into the decision to "do what we do" without much forethought, but with tons of heart and spirit. To choose this route one must have unlimited patience, time, space and *cough* access to funds. Our store items-- cage accessories, chew toys, food and other chinnie products-- ensure we can continue providing for the fuzzbutts. We supply our store with handmade, hand selected and often hand harvested materials.
As much as we appreciate the support of store orders, there are some ways to maximize the mutual benefit. Whimsy made the following post on our Facebook page recently that summarizes this point exactly:
"Hey everyone, we've had a bunch of requests for teeny tiny orders lately. This is heartbreaking, let me explain why. The postal service charges a base price on deliveries, then the price goes up according to weight, size and distance. It's the base price that's a killer. So if someone wants to order a single chew toy it's going to cost more than the item is worth just in shipping! As a single mother of four, I've had to live on a very tight budget and recognize the power of combined shipping and stocking up. For roughly the same cost, you can fill a box with multiple items and pay very little more in additional shipping cost. Just FYI"
As a reminder, we are now offering a free chew toy with orders of $50 or more. Is that incentive enough? Hmmmm....perhaps a ticker tape announcement on the store page would help....