My Owner

Who am I?

I’m Caplin’s owner, Melanie. I’m the one that wakes up in the middle of the night when he’s eeping for yogurt and I’m the one he counts on to clean his water/poop bowl every day. Caplin is the best thing that ever happened to me (sorry, kids).

I live in Buda, Texas, just outside of Austin. I’m a computer programmer, but instead of programming at work I mostly just talk about how wonderful my capybara is and update his various social networking profiles. I have a husband named Rick and two children, Coral and Philip. Caplin sometimes fights them for my attention. I tell him I love him best, but he’s a little insecure.

Why did I get a pet capybara?

Well, it was all my daughter Coral’s idea. When we were on a trip to Venezuela, she got to hold a young, wild capybara and she fell in love. After we got back, she pretty relentlessly pestered me about getting one for a pet. Since Coral lived in an apartment and was planning on spending a year in Asia, she couldn’t have a pet capybara herself so, she felt, it was up to me to fulfill her capybara vision.

Coral and wild baby capybara in Venezuela

Where did we get Caplin?

We spent some time scanning the internet and came across Mary Lee Stropes site www.capybaras.org. Mary Lee breeds capybaras so we quickly sent her an emai. Did she have any babies available? Do they make good pets? Mary Lee must get millions of emails just like that. I bet she never dreamed that this one would lead to Caplin Rous becoming the world’s most famous capybara! Mary Lee didn’t have any babies but she pointed us to Rick and Abby West at Star Farms. They had five baby capybaras they needed to sell quickly.

We rushed up to Nacogdoches that weekend and were surprised to find only one little capybara left, eleven-day-old Caplin Rous.