Millions of people have found comfort during the pandemic in cuddling a dog or cat. For a few, comfort comes in other forms — those of a horse or a pig, perhaps sugar gliders or even a spider.
In its place, her parents gave her a pig.
Chanchi turned out to be a loyal and loving companion — racing to her side when she fainted.
“One day my legs gave way and he came running. He grabbed my hair and raised my head,” she said. She had been taking online classes at home, unable to see friends or schoolmates. “I didn’t feel well. I was dizzy because I couldn’t leave.”
Without Chanchi, “I wouldn’t be me,” said Luciana, who often sleeps alongside the 45-pound Juliana pig that greets her with a squeal of delight when she arrives home.
Even more unusual is the case of Lorena Álvarez, whose Buenos Aires apartment is also home to 28 pocket-size marsupials known as sugar gliders.
“They create pure love for me,” she said. “Do you know what it is to lay down . . . and they smother you with kisses?”
Álvarez, who teaches statistics at a university — online these days — lives alone otherwise, but said the pets have helped her feel like she has company — sometimes climbing onto her head during Zoom calls.
“I get up and I live for them. They are my engine of struggle and of life,” she said of the animals that scamper over her looking to be petted.
The 28 are the result of two she adopted several years ago after getting a permit for the exotic animals.
That sort of multiplication is one reason that many animal rights groups oppose keeping gliders as pets.
Skeptics say the animals are often abandoned by overwhelmed owners less dedicated than Álvarez or suffer in the hands of people unprepared for the behaviors, special diets and needs of a tree-dwelling night creature that can glide for 50 yards when free. Some places ban them as pets.
Argentine veterinarian Adrian Petta, who specializes in unusual pets, said he’s seen hundreds of animals during the pandemic — pigs, rabbits, birds, rodents, geckos and the like.
“Many people have felt alone and have sought pets, or they are tired of the television and computers and need more [affectionate] relationships,” he said. Even with those that show no affection, “people can feed them and feel that someone or something needs them.”
That’s the case for Osvaldo Negri, a 50-year-old nurse.
Negri said he began raising spiders to overcome his fear of them. He now has 60. He said that caring for then has helped him cope with working at the hospital in the pandemic, “unplugging” as he watches and feeds the spiders.
“I concentrate on having to move slowly because if they frighten, they could fall” and could die, he said.
In the town of Tandil, 77-year-old Alberto Castro had spent much of his time at the Hogar San Jose, a home for the elderly, sitting in a chair.
That changed in March 2020, just as the pandemic started, when the home’s operator brought in a horse named Coco.
Castro took to caring for the horse, which arrived in bad shape.
“It changed my life. I care for it, it seeks me out and when I approach, it neighs,” he said. “As long as I am there, nothing is going to happen to it.”