Chinchillas

Lucky the chorus girl who can persuade her wealthy benefactor to buy her a chinchilla wrap, one of the softest, most beautiful, most expensive of furs, also one of the least durable, one of the rarest. A chinchilla collar today costs $2,000, a coat $30,000. Chorus girls should have cheered last week at news that the U. S. chinchilla supply is about to increase.

The chinchilla is a hopping rodent about ten inches long. It resembles a cross between a squirrel and a rabbit, with the squirrel's tail. Largest supply lives in Bolivia, Peru & Chile at altitudes between 12,000 and 19,000 feet. Chinchillas live gregariously in rocky burrows, eat leaves and nuts. The prime fur is so dense that fleas and lice cannot penetrate it. Each hair is tipped with black, slate blue about half its length, merging into a delicate pearl grey. Difficult to capture alive, chinchillas are shot by Indians with blow-guns using poisoned darts. The wound is only a pinprick, does not injure the pelt. Price of each pelt may be as low as $50 for a coarse, short-haired specimen, $500 for a particularly fine one.

For eight years the Chilean Government has prohibited the hunting or export of chinchilla, lest it become extinct. But naturalists as well as furriers have an interest in the chinchilla. No chinchilla has ever been kept alive in a U. S. zoo more than a year. The temperate climate of the U. S. is completely unsuited to the creature's constitution. In 1913 one M. F. Chapman of Los Angeles went high into the Chilean Andes, managed to trap a dozen. He brought them down gradually, kept them at 11,000 ft. for two years, 9,000 ft. for a year. It took him nearly six years to reach sea level. During the 8,000 mi. voyage to California the animals were kept packed in ice. All their hair dropped off, occasionally one fainted, had to be revived with cold compresses. In Los Angeles, Naturalist Chapman put them into a large screened building divided into pens running partly underground. Now, though Naturalist Chapman is dead, there are well over 1,000 healthy chinchillas on Chapman Chinchillas Inc.'s farm. One pair is capable of producing 126 babies in six years. From the Chapman chinchillas, no other chinchilla farms have been started in the U. S. Prime pelts will not be available for four or five years, but breeding pairs sell for $3.200.

Last summer two St. Louis boys decided to enter the field. Little knowing what their luck would be. Robert Urian Jr., 22. and Charles Curry, 23, left for South America. In Peru a guide led them on a chase after chinchillas and they wound up with a plant by the same name. In Lima they ran low on money, so Partner Curry hurried back to the U. S. to recoup. Partner Urian went on to Chile, arrived with only $30. Near Santiago he found a man who had trapped several chinchillas and would sell five. When Partner Curry finally rejoined him, they wangled an export permit, packed their chinchillas in ice, started back to the U. S. On the way three chinchillas collapsed had to be revived in a cold storage plant.

Last week Partners Urian and Curry were definitely in the chinchilla-raising business. Startled St. Louis found in its midst five healthy chinchillas, thriving in an air-cooled garage on a diet of grain, alfalfa, raw carrots.

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