The secret life of Mountain Brook pets

For most pet owners, it doesn’t take long for new furry housemates to become a beloved part of their family, whether they walk on four legs or not. 

While the typical pet and adopted fur baby might bark or meow, these resident Mountain Brook pets are a little more unique than their canine and feline counterparts.

Cookie and Cream

Cookie and Cream — what some may consider a delicious ice cream flavor — isn’t referring to a food dish in the Goodman household. Those are the names of their rabbits.

Cream is a floppy-eared rabbit with white-and-black coloring all over her body. Cookie is a light-brown lion head rabbit, characterized by the little “mane” of fur surrounding his head and lining his sides. Alex Goodman first got her bunnies in December after her family had backyard chickens for about six years.

“Last year, someone told us about the dwarf bunnies, and I kinda wanted a bunny,” Alex Goodman said. Around the same time, her mom was trying to get her to consider another pet she could cuddle with more.

“The chickens didn’t really let you hold them, and they didn’t really let you play with them,” Alex Goodman said. “And, they [the bunnies] can come inside.”

While Melissa Goodman said the bunnies are low-maintenance pets, her daughter spends part of each day taking care of them. She cleans their backyard cage, gives them food and extra water at night and spends time playing with them in a bunny playpen. Being in an outside habitat doesn’t bother Cookie and Cream, Melissa Goodman said, but the family did bring them inside during the winter storm in January.

Alex Goodman also said she was surprised with how cuddly Cookie and Cream are.

“They’ll just come right up to you and crawl on you and sit in your lap,” she said. Eventually, she wants to train them to walk on a leash and respond to their names so they don’t run away, and she and her mom are even planning on having a litter of bunnies, since neither Cookie nor Cream are fixed. 

“[My friends] think they’re so cute, and they really want bunnies when they have babies,” Alex Goodman said.

“That would just be fun to experience the babies,” Melissa Goodman said. 

Lillie

This past Christmas, Santa didn’t just bring presents for Alice Nelson; he also brought her a chinchilla.

Chinchillas are native to South America, specifically near the Andes Mountains, and Alice Nelson said she thinks that’s where Santa got her new pet named Lillie.

“She thought that while Santa was flying over South America on the way to North America, he picked up Lillie in the Andes Mountains,” said Alice Nelson’s mother, Christy.

Alice Nelson found an interest in chinchillas because her grandmother, who teaches science at Our Lady of the Valley, has one as a classroom pet named Choncho. 

Now, she and her family are raising Lillie as their own ball of fluff.

“They’re so soft, and they take dust baths,” Alice Nelson. “It’s cool; it’s instead of a bath with water,” she said, referring to the fact that chinchillas can’t take normal baths and instead must roll around in a fine dust to clean themselves.

Lillie likes to eat hay and sunflower seeds and gets raisins or rose hips as treats, Christy Nelson said, and because chinchillas are nocturnal, she plays at night in her cage. But that doesn’t mean Alice Nelson and her sister, Jennie Ruth, don’t get to have fun with Lillie.

After coming home from school, Lillie gets some play time with her family, and if she isn’t trying to run around, Alice Nelson will wrap her up in her shirt and sit with her, Christy Nelson said.

“She’s feisty,” Alice Nelson said. “She likes to jump around.”

And Lillie gets along with their dog, Fern, Christy Nelson said.

“Now, she [Fern] is kind of used to her,” she said. “They’ll get nose-to-nose and sniff each other through the cage.”

Eventually, Alice Nelson said she wants to train Lillie to respond to her name, stand up on her hind feet and walk on a leash. If she does train Lillie to walk with her, Alice Nelson said she wants to take her to visit her art teacher.

“Lillie has really grown on us,” Christy Nelson said. “She’s a lot cuter than I thought she would be, and she has a lot more personality that I thought she would have.”

Mitzi

What’s small, round and a little prickly? In this case, it’s not a pinecone, but a hedgehog that goes by the name of Mitzi.

Mitzi was born last summer and came home to her new family not long after.

“We were watching YouTube videos one day about hedgehogs … and then we said we really wanted a pet hedgehog,” Belle Perrine said. 

Belle Perrine learned more about hedgehogs after researching them for a school assignment, and she and her sisters brought the idea to their mom, Georganne.

“The kids really wanted a little pet like this, and then we kind of latched on to it [the idea], and it just snowballed from there,” Georganne Perrine said.

Mitzi brought about a lot of surprises for Belle Perrine and her sisters, Tiley, Anne Archer and Caroline. For a small animal, she can scurry rather quickly; she likes to burrow into clothes and other spaces, and she’s very prickly, Belle Perrine said.

“We were all kinda surprised about how prickly she can be,” Georganne Perrine said. Hedgehogs are covered in small quills, that when curled up in a ball, protect them from predators.

As a hedgehog, Mitzi eats cat food, mealworms or the occasional real worm and is bathed every month or so with a toothbrush and baby soap to clean her stomach. The Perrines also clean her cage and spend time playing with her outside, or because hedgehogs are nocturnal, Mitzi will play in her cage at night. 

One time, Belle Perrine said Mitzi escaped from her cage, and she found her curled up in her coat in her school backpack.

“She just likes to run around and try to find somewhere to burrow,” Belle Perrine said. “You can hold her and pet her; you can snuggle with her if you want some quiet time.”

“She belongs to all of us, but she definitely has that bond with Belle,” Georganne Perrine said.