The photo above was taken on 2010/12/03, just one month before Caplin Rous died. He looks the picture of health, eating nice tasty, green grass just like a capybara should. Is this what killed him?

UPDATE: Please see the ROUS Foundation page (using the tab at the top [...]]]>

Caplin Rous 2007/07/10 - 2011/01/04

The photo above was taken on 2010/12/03, just one month before Caplin Rous died. He looks the picture of health, eating nice tasty, green grass just like a capybara should. Is this what killed him?

UPDATE: Please see the ROUS Foundation page (using the tab at the top of this page) for more information!

Unfortunately we will never know exactly what happened. The necropsy reported chronic liver damage, possibly due to low levels of toxins in his food over a long period of time. Or it could have been from a disease that he had in the distant past. Or from the anesthesia that was used when he was neutered. Or he could have been born with a bad liver.

The innocent looking grass he is eating could harbor aflatoxins. But the same could be said for his hay or guinea pig food or almost anything he ate. Ironically the popsicles that everyone complained about me giving him are probably off the hook but almost everything else is suspect. Nevermind that the horses, the rabbits, the guinea pig and the people who ate the same foods did not get sick. Capybaras may have a greater sensitivity to aflatoxin,  or some other toxin, than any of the other consumers. We just don’t know.

That is why I have decided to start the ROUS Foundation for Capybara Veterinary Medicine. I am working with the veterinary school at Texas A&M University to get this going. There will be two foci of the ROUS Foundation. The first will be to sponsor necropsies and the second will be to study liver function in living capybaras.

You might not think there are many dead capybaras to perform necropsies on but there are a surprising number, especially when you consider zoos and breeders along with pet owners. A lot of the dead capys are babies or young ones who just don’t thrive for some reason (bad livers?), but even older capys like Caplin sometime suddenly sicken and die. Rarely do they get a necropsy to determine cause of death. The ROUS Foundation plans on paying for the necropsy and transport of the body to A&M. This should encourage people and institutions to have a necropsy performed so that we know why captive capybaras are dying.

I am not yet sure what will be done for the liver studies but I am hoping it will be a simple blood test. I will be taking Garibaldi Rous in as soon as possible to have his liver tested to get a baseline for him. We need data on healthy as well ill capybaras to make this work. I am worried that Caplin died from something in our environment, the same thing could happen to Gari. I plan on having his liver tested at least once per year and I’m hoping that if the tests are free other capybara owners will do the same.

I will be posting more information on this web site as it becomes available.

To donate to the ROUS Foundation, use the link on the right side panel or go to www.CaplinRous.com. Purchases and donations from that site go into a special account that I have set up to fund the charity. I will give some of those monies directly to A&M once everything is set up but I plan on using some of the money to create more sale items and generate more revenue that will, of course, feed back into the charity.

I wanted a chance to say thank you to everyone for everything. Your words make me cry but it does help to know how others care and how many people’s lives Caplin touched. He will always be loved and never forgotten.

When I thought about it, I realized that I [...]]]>

11-Month-Old Muddy Caplin

I wanted a chance to say thank you to everyone for everything. Your words make me cry but it does help to know how others care and how many people’s lives Caplin touched. He will always be loved and never forgotten.

When I thought about it, I realized that I have many, many photos of Caplin that I never shared, an example is the one above. I don’t know why I didn’t think that was cute enough. Maybe I was ashamed of how muddy he could get. Now when I look at it I just see how happy he is.

It also made me think that his fans might have photos of him that they’d like to share. I would love to see them. You can use the contact tab to send me an email and I’ll post the best or most touching photos in a later blog post.

I am still working on getting the charity set up. For now if you donate you can be sure the money will go toward capybara veterinary care but current donations are not tax deductible. Several people have asked about calendars so I ordered some additional ones. You can buy one by following the link on the sidebar. All profits from his calendar, Capycoppy or my book will go to the charity or to pay for Caplin’s final medical expenses.

Thank you,

Melanie

Sometimes things happen that there is just no way to prepare yourself for. Sometimes it seems like your world has fallen apart. That is how I feel now. Caplin Rous was the glue that held my life together. You might think you can see that from his presence [...]]]>

Caplin on Dec. 31, 2010

Sometimes things happen that there is just no way to prepare yourself for. Sometimes it seems like your world has fallen apart. That is how I feel now. Caplin Rous was the glue that held my life together. You might think you can see that from his presence on the web and on TV but that doesn’t capture it. The first thing I heard every morning when I got up was his cute little happy Geiger counter noise and it was the last sound I heard at night, at least until he eeped to wake me  for a midnight snack.

I’m going to let this blog speak for Caplin’s life, what a wonderful, cute and unique animal he was, his tremendous personality and his gentle nature. I can’t add significantly to that in a single post.

I’d like to thank everyone who has sent notes on Facebook or twitter or posted comments on this blog or any of his accounts or sent me personal emails. I have literally received  thousands of messages of condolence and it makes me cry to think how many people’s lives he touched and how many people will miss him. Thank you. It helps to know this. I wish I could respond to all of you individually but, to be honest, I haven’t responded to anyone because I just don’t feel up to it.

We still don’t know what happened to Caplin. He had been irritable for a couple of days but nothing serious. When I left for work Monday morning, he seemed fine. By the time I got home, he could hardly walk. I got his harness on him and was able to lead him to the car but I had to help him get in. I rushed him to Texas A&M University small animal hospital because they were the only ones I thought might have the expertise to help. It was the longest 140 miles of my life. By the time we got there, Caplin could hardly move.

An hour or so after we arrived at A&M, Caplin had a seizure and the vet had to give him a sedative to bring him out of it. After that, he was never really conscious again. He died the next afternoon from another seizure right after completing a head MRI. A full necropsy is being done but preliminary findings indicate chronic liver disease that at the end manifested as encephalopathy. Apparently Caplin had been sick for a long time but never shown any outward signs of it.

I will write a new post when we have the final results of the necropsy.

If you would like to help with Caplin’s medical expenses, please consider purchasing a Capycoppy plush animal from www.CaplinRous.com. We expect to set up a charity in his name and will use excess funds to seed that. When we have that in place, I will post about it on this blog.

Rolling in a dry Capybara Creek 12/11/2010

BY SANDRA BEASLEY

All can be measured by the standard of the capybara. Everyone is lesser than or greater than the capybara. Everything is taller or shorter than the capybara. Everything is mistaken for a Brazilian dance craze more or less frequently than the capybara.

I am sad to see 2010 slip into history since it was a very historic year for me. I am the first individual in all of time to have kept a New Year’s Resolution for an entire year! Yup, I did it!

My resolution last year was [...]]]>

I am sad to see 2010 slip into history since it was a very historic year for me. I am the first individual in all of time to have kept a New Year’s Resolution for an entire year! Yup, I did it!

My resolution last year was not to bite anyone. Can you believe I kept a hard resolution like that one? I’m telling you, there were times when it was touch-and-go, but I always pulled through in the end…or my intended target got away. Doesn’t really matter how I did it, does it? The important thing is that I did it. I did not bite anyone for an entire year. I don’t expect accolades but I certainly deserve them.

I spent many a long hour wondering how I could top last year’s resolution and do something just as impressive but not as hard. That was a difficult task, thinking. It is not something we capybaras like to do much. Finally I decided to dream about it and whatever happened in my dream would be my resolution (as long as it wasn’t too hard).

Believe it or don’t, my plan worked! I actually had a dream that I can make into a resolution. And it’s a wonderful resolution, if I do say so myself. Plus, it shouldn’t be too hard, at least not for me. I dreamed that my owner was working on her computer and I was watching her typing away like a mad woman. Can you guess what my resolution is?

I am going to write my autobiography!

I hear what you are saying, “Wow! That is a great resolution. I can hardly wait to read your autobiography but won’t that be hard? I mean, it’s not that easy to write a book.” I hear you. Those are excellent points. But you forget one important thing: I am a capybara. That means I don’t have to do the writing myself, I can have my owner do it.

Mind Control

Mind control is how I do it. Humans generally have weak minds that are very easy for an animal to control. The cuter the animal, the easier it is to control the human’s mind. You can see that I have no difficulty.

The only thing is my autobiography might come out sounding like a biography. I’m thinking it might be too hard to force my owner to think my actual thoughts. It is easier to get her to think thoughts about me. But you will all know it is my autobiography, right? My owner and I have already written one book together, Celeste and the Giant Hamster, and that was a piece of cake except that it had way too much cat stuff in it and not enough capybara.

This post isn’t really about me but I thought I’d start it off with one of my favorite videos of me anyway. I’m including this video just to remind people that I have a YouTube channel as CaplinCapybara with about 120 videos on it so far. However, [...]]]> Click here to view the embedded video.

This post isn’t really about me but I thought I’d start it off with one of my favorite videos of me anyway. I’m including this video just to remind people that I have a YouTube channel as CaplinCapybara with about 120 videos on it so far. However, you will notice that the above video is not on that channel. When I was a baby there was a bit of confusion about how to do things and ten of my earliest videos ended up on the Shmaplina channel. So if you want to see my baby videos, that’s where to go.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I like this video because it reminds me of me. I am always getting into my rabbit and guinea pig co-pets’ food. There is something about their food that is just better than mine. (By the way, hedgehogs are not rodents.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video is of my younger brother, Dobby, diving into his pool. OMG! When I saw that I really thought I was going to have to practice my diving skills. Dobby really set the bar high with that one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Luckily, Dobby considerably lowered the bar when he performed the “dive” in the above video. As you can imagine, I am no longer practicing. I have never had such a bad dive in my life, let alone let someone video it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a video that made my owner teach me how to do a circle. Personally, I hate this video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This one is kind-of neat because it shows how calm we capybaras can seem before we burst into action. I never do that though, maybe because I’m never afraid.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You might want to turn off the volume on this one. This is at the Nagasaki Biopark in Japan, possibly the best place in the world to view captive capybaras.

Well, that’s it for now. If you have a favorite capybara video, post a link to it in a comment.

Happy Holidays everyone!

I hear that it’s the most wonderful time of the year right now but I don’t know what to make of that.

How wonderful can it be when it is so cold outside and there’s almost no fresh grass for me to eat? And then there’s this [...]]]>

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hear that it’s the most wonderful time of the year right now but I don’t know what to make of that.

How wonderful can it be when it is so cold outside and there’s almost no fresh grass for me to eat? And then there’s this darned Christmas hat thing. My owner is crazy about taking my photo with my co-pets and all of us wearing hats. Above you see can me, Hello Pineapple and Capycoppy all wearing dumb hats. I was all, “Why am I always the reindeer? I want to be Santa once in a while.”

Capycoppy as the reindeer and me as Santa

I think that worked out better, don’t you? Capycoppy looks good with antlers.

You might think that all of us suffer equally but Capycoppy and HP did not have to go to PetsMart with me to get their photo taken with Santa. That pleasure was mine alone.

Okay, at first I was excited about it. I like going places and PetsMart and PetCo are a couple of places I like the most. Everyone is nice there. The shoppers and the employees are all animal people. They all know me now because I’ve been going there since I was a baby but they still get excited about me. I’m telling you, that kind of reception makes a capy feel pretty warm in the tummy. So I thought my visit with Santa would be fun. At first it was.

"All I really want for Christmas is for it to be summer."

Santa had to get down on the floor with me for the photo because I am too big to fit on his lap. Of course my owner made me wear dumb reindeer antlers again. Santa knew I wasn’t a reindeer though, for one thing those antlers are green.

After a while I got a little spooked. If you’re a capybara, and I’m suspecting a lot of my readers are, then you know that as prey animals we tend to get frightened in unusual circumstances. I don’t remember what scared me but I started to back up. As a capybara, you probably back up when you’re scared too. All rodents do that, I think.

I got a little scared.

What I didn’t expect is that Santa grabbed my harness and tried to stop me! There’s nothing to raise a capy’s fear level like being restrained! I PANICKED!

I panicked!

My owner told Santa to let go of me but for some reason he didn’t do it right away. Do you see how my feet are off the ground in the photo above? I was pulling with all my might. Then my harness started sliding off, my foot went right through the collar part and that scared me even more. Luckily Santa let go then and I calmed right down. A few minutes later, my owner noticed that I had a little bloody scratch on my nose, probably from the harness rubbing against me.

I know Santa didn’t mean to scare me. Afterward he came over and scratched me and was very nice. I felt bad that I got so scared. But he shouldn’t have tried to hold onto me. NEVER restrain a frightened capybara if you don’t absolutely have to. Anyway, I don’t think I’m ever going to have my photo taken with Santa again but you never know, I probably won’t remember any of this by next year.

Oh yeah, one final indignity. One of the PetsMart shoppers took my photo while I was there. That happens all the time. I don’t mind posing for photos at all. But this person posted my photo from PETSMART on PeopleOfWalmart.com. I was not at a Walmart and those photos are not meant to be nice.

The winter solstice, when the days start getting longer instead of shorter, is December 21st. That is a really good day to celebrate.

And don’t forget to watch the total lunar eclipse on the night of December 20th if you are in the western hemisphere.

My owner says the Capycoppies were made in my image and I guess it must be true because they are just like me in that they love yogurt. I’m not so crazy about their yogurt consumption though. What if my owner runs out? I am not [...]]]>

How much can those little guys eat?

My owner says the Capycoppies were made in my image and I guess it must be true because they are just like me in that they love yogurt. I’m not so crazy about their yogurt consumption though. What if my owner runs out? I am not sure she has really planned for this.

Stop begging!

They don’t give me a moment’s peace. Look at them eying my yogurt in my bowl!  My owner gave them their own but it is just never enough.

Capycoppy feeding frenzy

I almost sympathize with this. My owner really never gives me enough and the Capycoppies are probably always hungry. I suppose they are still growing and might someday be as big as me.

How many bowls of yogurt can they eat?

I guess I shouldn’t ask that question since it has never been answered for me and I am only one capybara. Poor little guys aren’t really that good at sharing.

Like Capy like Coppy

I love my owner but she doesn’t make it easy. Take today’s momentous occasion, the arrival of our first 75 Capycoppies. I was as excited as the next capybara but that doesn’t mean I want them piled all over me! At least they are soft and very [...]]]>

Do I look like a capy-sitter?

I love my owner but she doesn’t make it easy. Take today’s momentous occasion, the arrival of our first 75 Capycoppies. I was as excited as the next capybara but that doesn’t mean I want them piled all over me! At least they are soft and very lightweight.

Could you tell your friends to get off me?

Really, I love the little Capycoppies, they are my clones after all. I suppose we’re one big happy family. Except they are all small.

Put your paw in mine

My owner made a big deal about Capycoppy having realistic feet. Ah, I don’t think so! But they do have the right number of toes in the right orientation: four on the front, little toe to the outside, three on the back and all of them webbed. In case you’re wondering about that blob in the upper left of the photo, that is my nose.

Maple likes Capycoppy

I’m as patient as any capybara in the world, but I couldn’t take much of that. Pretty soon I got up and left so my owner had to resort to other photo-ops. The one above of Maple Bunny kissing Capycoppy’s ear is pretty cute.

Capycoppies and Kimikokapi

Kimikokapi was more obliging than either me or Maple. My owner managed to get this shot with 50 of the little Capycoppies and Kimikokapi. Did you notice she is wearing bunny ears and a bandanna? I think I was supposed to be sitting there but I dare my owner to get me to do it.

They're a little scary

To be honest, all those Capycoppies are a little scary. Are they my army or are they coming ofter me? Look at the glint in their eyes. What does it mean?

I am in the land of the Lilliputians

It’s just a matter of time before they tie me down with ropes just like they did in Gulliver’s Travels!

If I hold very still, maybe they won't realize I'm alive

Cute things can be evil too. In fact, things that are cute and evil are the most evil things of all. Maybe they’re like piranha, they’re each going to take just one little bite.

You want a kiss?

You want a kiss? That is so sweet! Maybe you’re not evil after all.

A hug is what we all need

All the world’s misunderstandings could be cured if we would just hug each other more. I can see now that the Capycoppies are my friends after all. I just had to get to know them better.

If you would like to adopt one of these guys, make sure you follow the link on the right side bar of this blog or just click here.

It’s true that I have served as a muse for some very outstanding artists…it’s just too bad my owner isn’t one of them.

I don’t want to be mean, but it’s true. She’s got the artistic talent of an untalented person. Nevertheless, my cuteness is so inspirational that she can’t help [...]]]>

Super Me

It’s true that I have served as a muse for some very outstanding artists…it’s just too bad my owner isn’t one of them.

I don’t want to be mean, but it’s true. She’s got the artistic talent of an untalented person. Nevertheless, my cuteness is so inspirational that she can’t help but draw me sometimes, always in a cartoon form because, well, the reason is obvious.

She spent a whole afternoon last weekend drawing the above picture of me and the Texas flag. The problem with my owner is that the only way she knows to stop is when she has completely ruined the thing she was working on. The initial drawing was fine so, of course, she had to keep going.

I've been framed!

Photoshop is a wonderful tool, but it can’t turn someone into an artist when there is no artistic talent there to start with. What does she think, putting a texture on me makes some kind of earth-shattering difference? Clearly, this wasn’t enough to really ruin the drawing.

A Change of Colors

She color shifted the background and added texture. Now we are well on the way to being “done.”

I'm a poster

Maybe she should have changed the color of my bandanna? Or what about my fur? A real artist would have done something more original.

Done!

Okay! I think we’re done. The blood is rushing to my head and I feel all wobbly and out-of-sorts. I can’t hardly tell if I’m coming or going.

By the way, you might think that drawing of me looks familiar. It should! It’s from a photo of me at the state capitol. You can see the photo in the previous post. And if you think about it, I don’t actually think she “drew” me. I think she cheated.