Mollie The #Chinchilla And The Broken TV

Hi everyone. This is Mollie the chinchilla.

Something dreadful happened... The TV broke.

Well, not broke exactly, but all it would say was, "No signal."

It's happened a few times before, but usually when it happens Mummy just has to wriggle behind the TV stand, fiddle with the wires a bit, and turn the box off and then back on. So usually it's only about five or ten minutes and I have my TV back. Enough time for me to not be happy about it, but not a big deal. At least, not a very big deal anyhow.

Except this time she tried that loads of times, and it wasn't working. She fiddled a lot behind the TV stand, messed with the box itself a bit, and even said a few bad words to it - which she doesn't do often; Daddy uses bad words, but Mummy doesn't use those kinds of words much, so we all know to stay out of her way if she does - but none of it helped.

When Mummy realized nothing she was doing was going to help, and lots of time had gone past with me having to just listen to music the nice lady called Alexa who lives in the little box near the TV had been playing for me while Mummy worked on the TV box, she talked for a while to someone on the plastic ringing thing, and then came and told me she was sorry, but they couldn't come fix it until next day, because it was too late in the day, so I'd have to have music for the night instead. She said Alexa wouldn't mind playing some all night for me, and at least it would be better than nothing.

Well, OK. It was better than nothing. It was also nice of that Alexa lady to play music for me all night. But it wasn't TV, so I wasn't happy. I sulked in my house all night, refusing to play, and then threw stuff at Daddy when he came near my cage to check on me, since I was sure it was his fault. I don't know how, but I'm sure he's to blame somehow. I didn't squeal though, since Mummy and Alexa making sure I had music did at least make me not feel I needed to do that. But I was very unhappy that night, let me tell you.

In the morning the TV was working again, but I heard Daddy talking to the man who had come to make it work again, and they said it's not completely fixed, so that might happen again. Mummy and Daddy seemed to be understanding, and accepting his answer, but that wasn't good enough for me, so I threw more things at Daddy, just to make my feelings known.

Mummy explained the problem to me afterwards, so then I understood, even if I still think it must be Daddy's fault somehow. After all, if he had nothing to do with it not working, why wasn't he the one trying to make it work again? Why did he leave Mummy to do it? The Lilie dog says it's just because Mummy knows more about how it works than Daddy does, but he's her favourite human, so she might just be making excuses for him.

Anyway, the trouble is, the man needs to go on the roof to fix it properly. But he'd have to either come all the way inside and go through the attic to get on the roof, or bring a really gigantic ladder. He didn't have a big enough ladder, and because of this Avirus thing we're in something called, "Lock down," - which I don't understand about, but apparently means he's not allowed to come all the way inside if it's not an emergency situation. Personally, I think no TV is an emergency situation, but apparently I'm the only one who does. So he wasn't allowed to come in all the way and go up in the attic to make sure my TV is completely fixed and won't go away again.

The TV repair man made sure to make a note that our TV needs to be fixed better though, and said he's going to ask someone to come sort it in June - or maybe even come back himself - when hopefully we won't be in one of those lock down things any more, so he'll be allowed to come in and go in the attic. He said we can phone if it goes away again and won't come back, and then someone will sort it out. But otherwise we have to wait until we aren't in this lock down thing any more, so have to wait until at least June to get it properly fixed.

I hope it stays working until whatever this lock down thing that's caused by Avirus is can be over with, because it was bad enough having a whole night without my TV. That Alexa was nice to play music for me, but it just wasn't the same.

Squeak soon,
Mollie