Amazing Animals: Chinchillas

Amazing Animals: Chinchillas

Bible Blast: Read Psalm 51:7-10

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7

Have you ever seen a chinchilla? Oh, my goodness. They are one of the cutest little animals God ever made! Their heads kind of look like a mouse’s, their bodies resemble a rabbit’s, and their long puffy tails look like a squirrel’s. Chinchillas are naturally found in the Andes Mountains in South America, so they prefer dry and cool weather.

One of the most unbelievable things about chinchillas is their fur. If you’ve ever touched one, you know exactly what I’m talking about. They have fifty or more hairs coming out of one hair follicle in their skin. (To give you an idea of what that’s like, we humans only have one hair per follicle.) Their fur is so soft and so fluffy!

Chinchillas aren’t superaggressive, but they do have one funky way of defending themselves. If an enemy grabs onto its fur, the chinchilla will actually release that fur from its body in order to get away.

Anyone who has a pet chinchilla will tell you that the most entertaining thing about owning one is the dust bath. In order to keep a chinchilla’s fur clean, you don’t wash it down with shampoo and a hose like you would a dog. A chinchilla cleans itself with dust. The dust is superfine powdery stuff made especially for chinchillas. Every now and then, you take a bowlful of chinchilla-cleaning dust and set it down near the rodent. He’ll very happily climb into that container and start flipping and rolling all around in it like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. The dust gets into his fur and cleans all the oils and yucky stuff that gets in there. It’s funny that dust—really fine dirt!—gets the chinchilla clean!

When you want to be clean from something bad you’ve done, the only way to do that is by telling Jesus about your sin and accepting his forgiveness, just like David did in today’s Bible Blast. God has forgiveness available for anyone who wants it. We just have to jump in and give it a whirl.

Girl Gab: If you’ve never seen a chinchilla take a dust bath, go online or to a pet store and check it out. It’s really cute. If there’s something you need to confess to God, go ahead and do that now. Thank God for his forgiveness.