I met Fuzzybutt the chinchilla on Saturday night. Stage Coach had invited friends over to watch Japanese anime — animated movies and TV series. (Don't call them cartoons!) I saw some very impressive animation and got a cross-cultural take on the English subtitles, and the portrayal of Americans/Europeans, by the Japanese person who was also there. The pizza wasn't bad, either.
Fuzzybutt provided the halftime entertainment. He looks and hops about like an overgrown kangaroo rat with a fluffy body about the size of a grapefruit, bunny-like ears and the softest, silkiest fur on earth. Due to the makeup of that plush coat, chinchillas don't bathe with water, or even with spit as cats do. Instead, they take dust baths. SC provided a big bowl of special dust, into which Fuzzy dove to squiggle and squirm in chinchilla ecstasy. He'd shimmy on his back, then flip over like a kayak roll on fast forward and scooty-scoot-scoot on his tummy. Lather, rinse, repeat. He looked and sounded like he was getting the greatest back scratching in the world. A very, very cute little critter.
This experience reminded me of my only other experience with chinchillas. A high school boyfriend and his buddies had a band, and they wrote a song called "Chinchilla." In the song, chinchillas were portrayed as carnivorous, fanged marauders — a far cry from the trail mix-nibbling sweetie I met Saturday. This pretty much described the band's whole approach to music: misguided, but harmless, marauding. I'm sure none of them looked as adorable in the bath as Fuzzybutt.