Chipmunk's health

Nevertheless, chipmunks are still comparatively healthy pets, although their going is often very wild. They race on wallpapers, on curtains, on hatracks, on floor lamps, above cupboards... They jump from one human being to another and sometimes they drop down to the floor *moks* and their trip will continue again quite as nothing special would have been happened. Dropping from high places (for example 2 meters) is quite normal to a chipmunk, who is allowed to run free outside of the cage and the owner will also get used to dropping chipmunks in time. There is no reason to be worried about the droppings unless the chipmunk hurt itself so badly that it starts to bleed.

If you suspect that your chipmunk has got a little fracture or something comparable caused by a dropping, but there is no bleed, it's usually all sufficient if you only move the injured chipmunk to a smaller cage for a few weeks. This way you limit chipmunk's exercise and thus the fracture will better recover by itself.

If a chipmunk is bleeding, the bleeding is often surprisingly heavy and then it could be better to bring the chipmunk quickly to qualified vet, if you don't have requisite first aid equipment and an experience on stopping heavy bleeding. In addition to this, a chipmunk can get bleeding, if its nail catches for example in cloth in full swing and breaks off from the root or in situations when aggressive/stressed chipmunk inflicts a wound on another chipmunk. In the worst situation it has happened even so that angry chipmunk has bitten another chipmunk to its throat in the way that the chipmunk has dead. In wrong circumstances (=too many chipmunks in too small cage) aggressiveness and stress are almost the greatest threat to chipmunk's health, because the stress predisposes also for other diseases and for a premature death. Stressed chipmunk can even eat its own tail and the stress may predispose the chipmunk also for chronic rash which becomes evident when chipmunk's fur is coming out wholly from the rash area (often from beneath the stomach and from the sides). Big changes in chipmunks life like moving or owner changing can cause also stress. When a chipmunk mother has got babies, you should not separate the father chipmunk to another cage and to a separation from the female for the sake of babies, because it will be quite a hard blow to the male chipmunk and it will cause almost without exception a strong stress to the male chipmunk. You can read more about chipmunk's stress and aggressiveness from the page One/more chipmunks?.

If someone, who is reading these pages just right now, know something about the cure methods of chipmunk's chronic rash, I would be very glad if you would send me some information about that, because there is several chipmunk owners who would like to know about these cure methods.

A chipmunk can get flu also from people and the flu will be infectious more easily if the chipmunk suffers from a stress. You will recognize chipmunk's flu if it's only huddling in one place, it's sneezing, its fur is ruffled up and it doesn't be interested in briskly games. However, my chipmunks haven't got the flu yet, although I have handled them also when I have been down with the flu. It's still an obvious thing that you do have to take care of them whether you are health or not. However, it's recommended that the one, who is down with the flu, should try to avoid needless contacts with chipmunks.

When chipmunks start to be prepared against the winter by collecting huge food stocks, it would be a good idea to give them also something food that can't be storaged but they just have to eat it at the time if they want it. It's also good to check that chipmunks do really eat something - at least sometimes, as if a chipmunk only storages and storages its stocks, it may forget to eat and in the worst case die of starvation during the winter time even if there were plenty of food.

Chipmunk's tail hasn't made from a renewable material. Even from this town (Oulu) you can find several chipmunks who have lost their tail on account of an accident - either partly or wholly. A tail can cut off if it's caught in a sharp edged object like unfinished cage edge or in a rodent wheel. Chipmunk's tail is not made for catching and picking up the chipmunk easily.

With a first time parturient female the delivery can be difficult and in an emergency you may need the help of competent vet for saving the mother and the babies. I know cases that the babies have stuck in mother's birth canal during the delivery and only the mother has been saved with the help of a vet, but all the babies have dead. Then I have heard from cases that a mother has dead for the heavy delivery, but all the babies have survived from the delivery alive with the result that someone has had to take over the duty of a substitute mother. However, this kind of cases are quite exceptional cases, because usually chipmunks' deliveries go through all fine.

If the liveliness and the inventiveness of a chipmunk will not lead the chipmunk in an accidental death like drowning in a toilet bowl :-/ most chipmunks will reach a long life. Like in human beings and dogs, the oldness brings along its own signs also to chipmunk's essence and looks. Chipmunk's ear sides and tail sides start to turn grey, its movements may become slower and its sense of balance will lose strength. An old chipmunk doesn't have strength enough to bustle so much than before, but it spends much more sleeping in its nest. An old chipmunk can come down with cancer, it may have circulation disturbances or its eyes may go blind. During the last weeks and months an old chipmunk is not any more able to go from the nest for eating or drinking by itself. Heart functions may weaken so much that the chipmunk can have difficulties to get oxygen and the chipmunk seems to drop gradually to some kind of coma gasping for breath. Movements of the chipmunk become very troublesome and the chipmunk may fall many times when it try to move on. After that, perhaps quite soon, the old chipmunk has slept away most frequently in its own nest.