The Piggies

For Charlie's last birthday we decided to get him a guinea pig. He was able to go and pick one out of a litter and then waited for several weeks for it to be big enough to come live at our house. John decided to spend his own money and buy one for himself, and since guinea pigs do better with a companion, we let him. I can never keep track of their names, they changed them so many times, but I think they have settled on Chuck and Larry, although I couldn't tell you which one is Chuck and which one is Larry. John's has grown to nearly twice the size of Charlie's, and is definitely a bully, which I guess is normal for guinea pigs. One will emerge dominant.

A couple of weeks ago, about five minutes after the boys left for school, I went to dump a handful of lettuce into their cage. No one came out of their little house to eat, so I was immediately suspicious. I lifted up the house and only one guinea pig was inside, looking a bit off kilter (don't roll your eyes, but their little faces are quite expressive). Charlie's guinea pig was missing! I didn't even know where to begin to look for him. I called Mike and asked him where the boys had last played with them, as I had been gone the night before. He couldn't remember, but he did know that they had them outside at some point. I went outside searching for bloody remains, but couldn't find any. I came inside and started pulling out furniture and listening for scurrying movements. I cried, knowing that Charlie's heart would be crushed.

Several hours later, while cleaning the kitchen, I noticed a strange cat hanging out in our back yard. Not unusual, as there are about 20 cats that pass through our yard on any given day. But, 20 minutes later, and the cat was still there, staring at our overturned Little Tykes slide. He kept trying to put his paw underneath the slide. I ran outside, thinking I must be crazy to infer so much from a strange cat's behavior, and I lifted up the slide, and there was Charlie's guinea pig, Chuck or Larry, shaking like a leaf! He had survived a night in our back yard, with the cats, raccoons and possums that are our nightly visitors. I brought him inside, plopped him on the cage, and plotted how I was going to scare the crap out of the boys so they would never do it again.

Well, whatever I said didn't work, because that same evening Charlie forgot about his guinea pig again, and, after I screamed at him to bring him inside to his cage, I officially decided that I was not going to worry about the fate of those little piggies. I already have three little boys that I can barely keep safe.