At Home with Romeo & Tuff’n

Marvin with Romeo and Tuff’n

In our last installment, Meeting Romeo and Tuff’n, I introduced the two capybara brothers, Romeo and Tuff’n, and their owners, Marvin and Elizabeth. As you may recall, I was in Las Vegas for the 2014 BlogPaws convention. It was a great chance to meet these two very personable capybaras and their proud owners.

Coral and Romeo

I had Coral with me as a seeing-eye daughter since my vision is no longer good enough for me to get around on my own. Coral had as great a time scratching Romeo as Romeo had being scratched.

This belly needs some scratching!

You get the feeling these two capys are used to a lot of loving attention, which they totally deserve! Isn’t Romeo’s belly cute? And very furry. Neither Caplin nor Garibaldi had such a furry belly.

Elizabeth & Stacy Winnick with Tuff’n

Meanwhile, Stacy was making friends with Tuff’n. It seems that every capybara was wearing a purple harness that day (including Mia, who had left by this point), so it was a bit confusing.

Me with Romeo and Tuff’n

This might not be the best photo of me, but it is one of my favorite moments from the trip. Who could not love lying in the grass, scratching these two friendly capybaras? Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Photographing Tuff’n

Look how little Tuff’n poses for a picture for Coral! I wonder if he’s wondering if she’s trying to steal his soul.

At home with Tuff’n

I titled this post “At Home with Romeo & Tuff’n” so I suppose we’d better proceed to their home. In the photo above you can see Tuff’n contemplating eating some hay in the living room. Marvin and Elizabeth are in the process of remodeling their house to make it more capybara friendly. One thing they have done is remove all the carpeting. When we were there, they were waiting for the weather to warm up enough to allow them to keep everything open so that the new flooring they were planning on putting down would dry quickly and any fumes would not be trapped in the house with the capybaras (and humans).

The quilt on the wall was done by Nina Helms McCampbell for the ROUS Foundation. The RF gave that quilt to Marvin and Elizabeth in memory of their first capybara, Templeton, who died not long after I lost Caplin Rous. Rest in peace, little Templeton.

C hillaxing at home

Elizabeth and Marvin have also worked at selecting home furnishings that are capybara friendly. As you can see in the above photo, Romeo is perfectly at home on this spacious couch. I’m pretty sure there is plenty of room for Tuff’n up there too, and probably even Marvin and Elizabeth.

Pool time!

Most of the backyard is taken up by the pool. There is a small area of grass known as The Templeton Memorial Garden. The pool is available for the capybaras to use whenever they would like.

The water looks cold.

We were there in early May and the weather was a bit on the cool side. The capybaras did not look excited about entering the water.

Comfort is where you find it

This did not look like the most comfortable spot to sunbathe in to me, but Tuff’n thought it was just fine.

Dive! Dive! Dive!

Tuff’n took a little persuasion to go into the water but Romeo declined altogether. Once Tuff’n decided to go in, he just followed his nose! This is exactly how Garibaldi Rous used to go in, nose first with very little splash. Caplin Rous always dove in with great energy so that he frequently went all the way to the bottom of the pool. This shows some of the unique behavioral differences among capybaras.

Tuff’n surface swimming

Tuff’n underwater swimming

Well, that’s it. I hope you have enjoyed meeting Romeo and Tuff’n (and Marvin and Elizabeth) as much as I did.