Ingrid I mean sell this baby, not mommy and daddy. I have a bad habit of getting attached to the babies and end up keeping them. I already have 7. I keep all but my breeding pair separated by sex. I haven't checked to see if the new addition is a male or a female but I think it will be violet like it's daddy. They don't multiply out of control like most rodents. Mine only have 1 litter a year and the average litter is 2 kits. They have a 3 month gestation period and it takes 10 weeks to wean them. Their average life span is 15 years. Isn't that more then you ever wanted to know about a chinchilla. lol

Thanks guys. Yes, it is a lot of work to bring everything inside and out depending on the nighttime lows. Luckily this past spring I only had to move half my collection in twice with the threat of frost. I keep most in my garage, and some in the basement under grow lights. Mnpalms- I think that trachy from monrovia is actually a waggie! The leaves are way stiffer than any trachy I've ever seen, even stiffer than my stiff leaf trachy. Great buy at only $22 for a 7 gallon. Found it less than a mile from my house. Yardman- I'm down in Grosse Ile just FYI. Did you treat the crown with anything? If you don't see growth yet, I'd pour some peroxide down into the crown. Usually takes a few weeks from treating the crown for a trachy to start growing again, but be patient. Squeeze the trunk to make sure it's firm and not rotting. And as for the basjoos, I got some from Goldner Walsh before, I heard that Joe Randazzo's fruit market had 4 footers last year. Mine are all from last year. I bought them from Grosse Ile Marketplace, same place where I bought my waggie and hardy bamboo. They always have good stuff. If you can't find any, once mine start growing and putting out pups you're more than welcome to drive down here and I'll give you some.

Well I just keep watching them this morning and they are both fliting all over down there, wing waving like crazy. The momma did finally figure out the mealworm feeder this morning. I have it clamped on a small 3 step stepladder and this morning I took it off and just put the dish on the stepladder and she ate out of there. Then I put the feeder back onto the ladder and put the dish in it and left. She flew to it and then away but later I saw her go into it. Yeah! I am going to check the nest today and see what if anything is up in there as I haven't checked it since Friday. I am still not convinced that this is the original male but then maybe I am just overreacting to things. Donna

Been there, done that...lint is such a HUGE annoyance to my life. We're in a 2nd floor condo where the dryer vent ducting goes to the roof through the attic over 20 feet and several elbows. My husband bought the condo years before we met, and the ducting was clogged after several years. At the time, he decided to disconnect the vent from the duct. The resulting moisture did some damage to the cabinetry (swelling of the particle board, even under layers of oil-based paint). Soon after we married, he decided we needed to fix the problem correctly. He went up into the attic and disassembled the ducting, brought it outside, and blew it out with his air compressor. I pushed some cleaning tool through it as well. We can't be doing this regularly! I mean preferably, never again! So, I had him put a filter -- a gallon paint strainer -- over the dryer vent where it connects to the machine. This clogs every month or so, we pull the machine out, disconnect the vent, clean the strainer, and put it back. This is still an annoying chore, but not the nightmare of dealing with the whole duct run. My husband had a cool idea, that what we need to do is sew a new, longer strainer that tapers to a skinny point, so that even when it clogs at the point, there can still be air flowing past the clogged strainer, and we should be able to go longer between cleanings. We got a new dryer last summer, and pulled the ducting out of the attic to clean it -- but it was already clean as a whistle. So, our secondary filter system has kept the duct run clean for 9 years. I found you can buy secondary lint traps with a door that opens to clean them out, but we don't have room to install the box in our laundry room, and I don't think it would work any better or be easier to clean than our homemade filter. When I redo the floor, I plan to put magic slider thingies under the dryer feet to make it easier to move in and out, plus I won't want to gouge my new floor. I have researched other solutions. People claim that solid metal vent will maintain better airflow than pleated, but I think it will still clog because we need 2 90-degree elbows to get it connected to the duct in the wall. And if it clogs, how do we pull out the machine with a non-stretching vent? If we could move the duct in the wall to match the dryer vent outlet, that would eliminate 2 elbows and would probably help... I also found you can install a secondary fan in the ducting near the exit, increasing the airspeed in long ducts so the lint won't clog. They cost $150-200, but if I never had to clean out the duct run or pull out the dryer to clean my makeshift secondary lint trap ever again, it would be well worth it. I also think that our ducting is leaky somewhere, because rooms on the other side of the wall (our master bath) get crusted with lint all the time. Finding and sealing those leaks would probably improve airspeed some, plus save me tons of work cleaning the lint all the time. I think the additional fan is the way to go. In 2 other areas where we replaced an ineffective low-cfm cheap fan with a high-cfm good one, like the hood over our cooktop, it made an amazing difference, night and day. Here is a link that might be useful: example of dryer duct fan