Happy January everyone! And welcome to 2018!

For the month of December three (3) chinchillas were surrendered and six (6) chinchillas were adopted. We had a largish number of inquiries for adoption in December as folks considered adding new family pets before the holidays. Christmas is a great time to justify spending the necessary start up costs for chinchilla ownership. But once the big ticket items are taken care of, the rest is (usually) maintenance. For us, the fun part is post-holiday when we meet all the new chin parents who hear about our rescue and webstore. We love seeing all the different ways people use our cage accessories and chew toys to decorate cages and pamper their pets. Happy! Happy! Happy!

But now for some long awaited news. For those of you who have been following us for some time, you know that we were this --><-- close to winning the Rock Spring Farm Essay Contest two years ago. Ever since then we have looked for a suitable alternative. When the essay contest was canceled after we learned we were finalists, some of you suggested we start a gofundme page to gather donations for the purchase of a larger place. Whimsy didn’t feel comfortable asking for donations to foot the bill for a new home. That is our personal responsibility, no matter how much of it is related to operating the rescue and support store.

It’s been difficult to keep the secret. And actually, 2017 has been a frustrating one as we chased after the possibility of owning a certain property that never panned out. We did, however, find another place that is even better! And the amazing thing is, our contest essay gave us the edge this time around as ours was the “backup offer” that earned the favor of the sellers. So with this news we’d like to announce that we’ve found the future new home of Whimsy’s Menagerie!

The new place is remarkably perfect. It has a charming home on lush acreage. There is room enough to keep the horses on our own property, and planting space to transfer and expand our young organic orchard. Best of all, it has a separate workshop/warehouse/office building that is larger than our current home! We will finally have the much needed space to work and keep the chinchillas in a building other than our living quarters. Additionally, the shop has its own septic, gas and electric system. This will allow our CPA an easier task of keeping our business and personal expenses separate. Whimsy’s Menagerie runs and operates through webstore sales and donations, but Whimsy does not take a salary. We have alternate means of income for personal expenses such as for the mortgage on the new home. We’ve got the new home covered now, but ask that those of you who would like, can contribute to the modeling and finishing of the new rescue room.

The future “Whimsy’s Workshop” is a blank canvas. There are offices carved out of a portion of the building that are finished with insulation, drywall, lighting, heat and AC. The actual workshop area is a gigantic unfinished space where we would need to claim some for the rescue room, quarantine/isolation room, sanitation area and storage. For this we need to have interior walls constructed and insulated, a stairway built for attic storage access, floor laid, electrical, heat and AC routed. We have had a structural engineer come to assess and estimates presented. 

Our future new home is currently under contract with a closing date of spring 2018. So we have a few months to prepare. We’re planning to make the move seamless as we shift in stages from one location to the other. But we can certainly use some help with transport, set up, cleaning, construction, etc. The following gofundme link is in place specifically for the construction and improvement of the rescue and related areas. We hope to have this project funded and started by the end of March. If you would like to contribute, we would be thrilled! Alternatively, any donations or funds “rounded up” made through paypal that do not cover regular operating costs, go into the construction fund. We’re excited to finally share with you the relief of our growing pains. Thank you everyone for making this possible! The good favor of our new and returning customers has convinced us that we're doing the right thing.

Happy November everyone!

For the month of October, two (2) chinchillas were surrendered and two (2) chinchillas were adopted. We’ve had quite a number of folks contact us regarding pairbonding but fewer individuals looking to adopt for the  first time. Even still, it amazes me that people can be obtuse enough to try contacting a shelter looking for chins to breed. It...just…never…ends. I can say this with the backing of experience as we are…

…now in our 10th year! November 1st 2008 was our official start date of Whimsy’s Menagerie. It’s been quite a ride! In that time we’ve stretched and grown, tried and failed, kicked and screamed and laughed a whole lot. What started as a homeschool project has become a lifestyle. We’ve settled in to a beautiful routine. Over the past decade we’ve managed to fine tune our operation. We have an easily recognizable signature for our cage accessories and chew toys and are always so thrilled when people tell us how well made everything is. We and our special needs student helpers thank you. Here is the original video of our early years.

We’re to the point now where some of our supplies and raw materials come by the pallet load. For the past two years we’ve been looking to move to a place that would allow for this expansion. We may have finally found that future home, but have been working out the details for the better part of this year. This is the cryptic news Whimsy has mentioned in past posts. Fact is, it’s been a very slow, laborious process with many, MANY closed doors, road blocks and issues. BUT, we seem to be on the fast track now. Time will tell. And speaking of time, during the nearly 10 years of operation, half of Whimsy’s children have graduated from college and moved on to pursue their life paths.

One funny story goes that when our webmistress (sassy looking first born on the right) graduated this past spring with her graphic arts degree, during one job interview the person nearly jumped out of her chair at the mention of Whimsy’s Menagerie. Apparently she’s a follower of ours. (If you’re reading this, thank you for the fun reaction.) Another time our hardware supplier had to actually contact Whimsy by phone (a highly restricted task!), he gushed that he felt like he was talking to a celebrity. How curious. In all honesty folks, I have no idea what I’m doing, but am sure getting good at it!

Being a single mom who works with power tools is somewhat of  an oddity. Our home is on a corner lot with full view of Whimsy’s shop area. On more than one occasion we’ve actually had men approach Whimsy to say that she should let her husband do the tool work. Uh….

But we do like to have fun in that regard. Once, we picked up an especially large load from the lumber yard. Standing in line to check out a couple of men walked  by with quizzical expressions on their faces. I jumped at the chance to have some fun and asked my daughter if she thought the lumber would fit in her hatchback. Another time the cashier made a comment about the big, beautiful stack of well grained lumber and our plans for it. I innocently said, "it’s for the firepit. We’re just going to burn it." He nearly cried. We had to console him. Another time at a woodwork shop our friend (who works there) commented to his co-worker about my woodworking skill. At which point I whipped out a raw apple wood wedge that just happened to be in my pocket and proudly displayed my “craftsmanship”. *cough* The confused look on the guy’s face was priceless.

And then there are the chinchillas. We’ve met all shapes, sizes, temperaments, conditions and colors. We’ve been peed on, bitten, groomed and snuggled. We’ve helped chins through medical conditions and eased some over the rainbow bridge. We’ve tamed some. We’ve found homes for lots and lots, and sadly, received some back. Some we’ve taken back by legal means when an adoption contract was broken. We’ve boarded chins, bonded chins and even bought chins. Whimsy started as a pet owner, dabbled a bit with the show circuit, and finally settled into hard core rescue work. Fact is, the chinchillas deserve it. Not to be treated as objects. Not to be used to fulfill some misplaced maternal desire for a baby, and certainly not as machines to pump out living creatures for financial gain. These adorable, sentient creatures are worthy. Just ask them. They’ll tell you if you listen.

Happy November Everyone!

For the month of October, five (5) chinchillas were surrendered and six (6) chinchillas were adopted.
The year has absolutely zoomed by and the beginning of the month, and our anniversary, passed once again without fanfare.

Chinchillas have literally become my life and I can't imagine not continuing with Whimsy's. And since it's the day after Thanksgiving, it's only appropriate that I thank you everyone for the excellent, encouraging words and continued support with your orders. Thank you so much all for spreading the word about our rescue and store and thank you personal watchdogs on the forums who have confronted those who have tried to copy our designs! Thank you to those of you who round up your invoice total and thank you to those who have the special blessing to submit donations above and beyond. (You know who you are). Thank you to the countless wonderful families and individuals who have sought to provide a home for one of our rescues. With all these blessings it's much easier to deal with last year's loss of our dream. We very nearly won a 35 acre farm. Whimsy's essay was chosen as a finalist among thousands, but the essay contest was canceled right along the home stretch. It was a crushing piece of news to know we were so close. Now, as promised last month,  here is the essay we submitted.

---

My life operates as a series of ironies and clichés. I was born with an intense love for animals, but am allergic to them. I also have allergy-induced asthma that reacts to animal dander, dust and pollen. Yet I operate a home-based small animal rescue and work diligently to make my organic garden into something resembling a Thomas Kinkade painting.

As a child I would never leave home without my rescue inhaler and wad of tissues. My constant presence at the neighborhood horse stables earned me the friendship of the owner's daughter. There she gave me literal crash courses in horseback riding and fence mending. By the time I was 14 years old, I bought my first horse with money I earned delivering newspapers. Sir Ashleigh, Tenderfoot of Hamburg, didn't mind my constantly runny nose. Often we would sneeze and blow in tandem.

Ever a statistical outlier, when I was 19 years old I went looking for a new home with greener pastures. I left one coast for another with my horse and pet chinchilla when we moved from California to Virginia. Here I also found a nursing degree and a husband. We started our family immediately and my career as stay-at-home mom began. Sadly, my children never met my horse. Like a foreshadowing of marital events, Sir Ashleigh passed away unexpectedly when I was pregnant with our first child. It was an accident, but one that never lost its sting.

Persisting in the "despite all odds" saga, in 2003, I became a single mother of four small children. When the judge questioned my ability to survive, my divorce lawyer explained that I was a woman who could make five meals out of one chicken. "Just do it" was my mantra to go back to college while continuing my commitment to homeschool the little ones. I managed to graduate Magna Cum Laude and earned multiple degrees in Speech/Language Pathology, Special Education and Psychology. My two oldest daughters followed closely in my academic footsteps when they enrolled precociously in college at ages 13 and 14, and continue to maintain perfect 4.0 grade point averages. My youngest daughter also began college at age 13 and earns straight A's just like her sisters. I like to believe my family would fit in well in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon stories: "Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average."

A country girl at heart, for years I would dream aloud with the kids about one day having our own farm with horses again. We talked of cultivating orchards and growing our own hay, of having some quirky fainting goats, a guard donkey, perhaps a llama or two, and of course a peacock. As proud supporters of the backyard hens movement, we collectively lament that the Virginia Beach city council refuses to permit its residents a few chickens. So while the city ordinances don't allow for farm animals in our neighborhood, we had to be content with dogs, cats, birds, fish, a flying squirrel, a hedgehog, ferrets and 100 chinchillas.

The chinchilla "thing" began as a homeschool project. We had the time, experience, space and heart to fill an unusual but overlooked need. We began our operation as a chinchilla specific rescue in November of 2008 and have grown to be one of the largest and most successful of our kind. During this time a few local and national magazines have written articles that spotlighted our shelter. The positive regard has been both rewarding and humbling.

The chinchillas reside in our converted garage that opens directly into our kitchen. To make more room for triple stacked cages we gave up the adjoining laundry room three years ago. To make even more space, we also traded our giant water heater for a tankless external unit. On occasion we have to hold temporary cages in the dining room. But that is reserved for short term boarders or emergency transfers from other shelter facilities.
I have since learned that other people's unwanted pets pose a never-ending influx. My greatest task now is to keep the ratio of surrenders to adoptions relatively equal and the cages out of the primary living area. We are operating at full capacity and have a waiting list for incoming animals as I struggle to reclaim enough space to have a washer and dryer again. It's a constant battle to keep their bath dust and pine shavings out of our home. What was once plenty of room has become crowded, and the chinchilla "thing" has become a full-time job.

To support the career that chose me, and by popular demand, we began making cage accessories and chew toys from select fruit and nut woods. An aspiring Master Gardener, I provide tree pruning as a free service. In return we get to keep the branches to cut, process and fashion into chinchilla chew toys. Together with help from the special needs students at a local high school, we assemble our original pet chews.
Volunteering with the students is undeniably a win-win situation. We began this mutually beneficial relationship during a required practicum for one of my Special Education courses in college. When the teacher lamented that she didn't have enough community jobs for her students to fulfill their work experience requirements, I told her about how handling all the different shapes and textures and following the patterns of our chew toy designs helps my son, who also has special needs. We've been volunteering with the students now for about as many years as we've been operating the rescue, and plan to keep our bimonthly visits indefinitely. We've seen many of the students who age out of the school system and are left with very limited opportunities to be contributing members of society. A dream I have fostered is to ultimately open an adult home and working farm for individuals with cognitive disabilities. The number of students and chinchillas we serve has steadily risen over the years and sometimes, especially during the hottest and coldest months of the year, it's a challenge to cut and process enough materials to keep the students and critters busy.

Out of necessity, I've become a successful craftsperson and have acquired an impressive array of tools. Not only do we make chew toys, we also create signature designed cage accessories. Environmental enrichment is something I strongly advocate when it comes to keeping a healthy and happy pet. We built a tidy little backyard workshop that is jam-packed with wheeled bins of parts and pieces that we bring with us when we have student work days. It also holds boxes of cut lumber ready to assemble into ledges, hidey houses, and chinchilla-sized bridges and swings. Large, pre-decorated cages that we offer for sale with chinchilla adoptions fill the center of the shop. I have to shift everything around like a game of Tetris to get to my supplies. Admittedly, my workshop is now too cramped for more than operating the tabletop drill press or router. I do most of the big cutting and especially dusty work outside, weather permitting.

As our little homeschool endeavor has grown, so has the demand on our modest space. The chinchillas have two rooms devoted to their cages, and the dining area is the showroom for the products we offer in our online store. My master bedroom and the majority of the upstairs and reclaimed attic are storage for boxes, packing supplies, hay, dried herbs and whole loofah in bulk, emergency travel carriers, a few hundred pounds of pumice stones and processed wood, and other raw materials. Like wearing "skinny pants" after a big meal, or home is nearly bursting at the seams and uncomfortably full.

Man plans, God laughs. My "5 year plan" included paying off the house and saving for a larger home with elbow room and land enough to have horses again. Last summer as I scrolled through the local Craigslist for garden supplies, I found my dream horse. Things just fell into place and by the end of the week I had my heart's desire. I managed to find a pasture board facility a half hour's drive away and three months later we added our second gaited mare. Sharing two horses among a family of five has been an interesting challenge, so this summer I found the perfect little confidence building Paso Fino gelding. He and my youngest daughter bonded immediately. Horses are a lot like potato chips (it's hard to have just one or two), and we are undoubtedly making up for lost equine time. It does concern me that the collective boarding fee for our growing herd is nearly as much as a mortgage payment-- minus the equity. We visit the horses daily as I insist on a self-care arrangement. But the daily drive to the stables itself is a time-stealing, joy-sucking demon of necessity.

For my son with autism, riding and grooming the horses is therapeutic. My oldest daughter is a natural born equestrian. She and our green broke Rocky Mountain mare are learning together and are quite a remarkable team. My second daughter is too timid to ride my very forward moving Spotted Saddle horse. She has expressed that a mini would be just her size and speed. My youngest daughter has pseudoseizures and also feels safer closer to the ground. Horse-drawn carriages are something we considered, but never thought the opportunity could be a viable one here in the suburbs.

I hope that this essay has proven and shown that I am a good steward of all that is entrusted to my care. I am debt-free and have excellent credit, but ironically, am unable to get approval for a loan of the necessary amount to meet our growing needs. I have always maximized the use of what I have, and dream within the realm of possibilities. Rock Spring Farm would afford an almost limitless canvas to paint those dreams into reality; whether it would be for a chinchilla shelter, group home, orphaned foal rescue, horse motel, day camp for children with special needs, or a respite for those in mental anguish. I have confidence that our history demonstrates we are capable, responsible, high-energy and ultimately portable as we are eager and ready to expand. Even so, if my children and I were fortunate enough to win the farm, my biggest hope would be that people say it couldn't have happened to a nicer family.

Happy (late) September everyone!

For the month of August, zero (0) chinchillas were surrendered and one (1) chinchilla was adopted. We're having a much better September for adoptions, but that news will have to wait for next post. ;)

Updates! Updates! Updates!

Thanks to y'all, we've grown and grown and grown. You've read all about our laments regarding space issues and know that a larger home is on the agenda. Whimsy has big plans for a larger workshop, warehouse, chinchilla rescue building (not just a room in our home). We're also making plans to grow our own hay and nurture an orchard with which to grow and "branch out" our need for safe, organic fruit and nut woods. Sorry, pun intended.

The lender's requirements for a loan on a new property hasbecome much more rigid, however. The current news is that we would need a loan of between 500-600 thousand dollars with a down payment of at least 20%. (choke) We could take growth one step at a time. Whimsy actually has two orchards under consideration right now. Although we would strongly prefer to have all of our necessary "things" on the same property. So...once again we're seeking ways to expand while we save our pennies.

We have converted attic space for storage and finally broke down and got two storage units to rent. (I told you we need a warehouse). We've begun purchasing certain supplies by the case and pallet load; hardware, accent beads, shipping boxes, herbs, vine products, loofah and pumice. Which reminds me...big shout out to Whimsy's friend Brian for coming through on the promise for makingarrangements for 440lbs of pumice sent from abroad.  Wait 'til y'all see what we have in mind for that! Spoiler alert!

We're also slowly, but surely working on revamping the website, logo, etc. For those of you who follow us on facebook, you've probably see this cute little design. 

We're working on a whole series in this style, including a change to our logo. Hopefully we'll have some of them ready to go in time for Christmas.

That's all the news for now, time to git back to werk. 

Happy August everyone!

For the month of June, zero (0) chinchillas were surrendered and zero (0) chinchillas were adopted. This time of year is typically when we get bunches of requests for boarding. Fortunately, our local chinnie friends understand the very limited space we have here now. We did manage to finally get a clothes washer and dryer. Unfortunately, that means even less room to devote to the chinchillas. We are considering some pretty radical steps to reclaim some room since the option to purchase a larger home is simply out of our financial reach.

When we began our rescue venture many years ago, we erroneously believed that the occasional mass surrenders were temporary. But alas, it's become the expected norm that we hear of large groups of chins needing homes at least a couple times each year...not to mention the dozens of singles and pairs that also become unwanted. The shocking part is how many chinchilla "breeders" go out of business, or lose interest, or experience a health or family emergency and are stuck with mass amounts of animals they need to rehome. So for all you closet breeders out there, there is NO SHORTAGE of chinchillas for pets And other, more respectable, long term breeders have already "perfected" the breed.  

On a more positive note, laws are popping up all over the country regarding shutting down puppy mills. Some pet stores are also cracking down on the purchase of certain other backyard bred animals like rabbits and guinea pigs. Hedgehog breeding requires a USDA license and ferret breeding is under a pretty strict monopoly. I sincerely wish the same goes for chinchilla breeding soon. One can only hope...