It’s a jungle out there
The commotion from the small box is impressive. Charlie somersaults frantically, coating his luxurious fur with layers of sand powder. He emerges, his large ears cocked adorably, a dusty, satisfied chinchilla.
His owner, Matthew Anderson, a sophomore majoring in English, looks on.
“It’s supposed to clean his fur,” Anderson said of the dust bath. “He really likes it.”
It seems when it comes to student pets, dogs are for the birds.
For the uninitiated, a chinchilla is a rodent from Chile and looks like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. Long revered by rappers and debutantes sporting coats of soft chinchilla fur, Anderson said he prefers Charlie in pet form.
“I’ve always wanted one because they’re fun, and I just like animals,” Anderson said. “He’s fun to just chase around. He’ll just run away from you. He’ll play with you, get up real close and then run away again.”
Charlie is easy to care for, Anderson said, and cost about $200 including his cage and supplies. He eats alfalfa pellets, hay and sunflower seeds, and he loves raisins.
Anderson said Charlie is “super smart” and can navigate barricade courses Anderson makes, generally by just jumping over them. He can jump about four feet high.
“He hops more than walks,” Anderson said. “I got him a ball so he could roll around the house like a hamster, but he can’t do it because he doesn’t move that way.”
Anderson said Charlie makes a great pet but probably won’t sit in your lap while you watch TV.
“I think he’s a great family pet. He’s way good with kids,” Anderson said. And he comes with benefits.
“Chicks really like it, I guess,” Anderson said.
Ricky Christensen, a junior majoring in public relations, is lucky to be married, because he might have a harder time impressing girls with his skunk gecko.
The gecko, named Simon, is native to Australia and was a gift from Christensen’s brother-in-law. He said his wife took a little convincing when they first got him.
“At first she was really, really apprehensive about even getting him, but she’s grown to love Simon,” he said.
That could be because Simon is charming, Christensen. He has specialized feet that allow him to suction onto whatever he walks on, a peculiar feeling when it happens to be your skin. Christensen said Simon sometimes walks with his toes curled in if he doesn’t want to stick to a surface.
“He’s actually a great pet,” Christensen said. “He’s really easy to take care of; he just eats like twelve crickets a week.”
He said the only trouble he has with Simon is that he sometimes worries about losing him in the house, and he has to be careful when he takes Simon out of his cage.
“He’s really, really fidgety,” Christensen said. “He’s so fast, and he can jump pretty far, so he’s just running all over the walls and stuff. I’m afraid he’ll get lost.”
A gecko may be hard to keep track of, but it’s hard to misplace a camel. Kyle Tolman, an undeclared freshman, has one, and he recommends it.
“He’s awesome. He’s just the best pet ever. I mean, who has a camel?” Tolman said.
Tolman’s camel Moses is a dromedary, a one-humped camel. The Tolman family originally got him to be in a church nativity scene, trading a horse to a woman in Colorado. Native to Africa, Moses manages to stay warm through Utah winters with his dense fur.
Still, he looks out of place on the Tolman family farm near Mendon.
“We’re thinking of putting him on the highway so when people drive by we can count how many crashes there are,” Tolman said.
Moses has a political background, stumping on the Quad last year during ASUSU elections and helping Tolman with a successful campaign for a spot on the student council in high school with the slogan “Help Moses Lead You to the Promised Man.”
Moses is pretty easy to care for and just eats grass hay, but is basically a novelty. Tolman said.
“He’s the most do-nothing animal we have,” Brad Tolman, Kyle’s father, said.
However, in his defense, he helps herd the cows.
“We go out on the horses and he follows us, and we’re herding the cows, and he herds them for us. He bites them on the butt,” Kyle Tolman said.
And like the chinchilla, Moses makes a great wingman.
“All the girls knew that when they went on a date with Kyle, they’d get to see the camel,” Brad Tolman said. “We always wondered where he got all those cute girls.”