~A Guinea Pig Story~

Hello, blog readers!
The Kerrys are supposed to be here any time this morning. I'm so excited! The came all the way from Montana to visit family and friends, which also includes us! They called me for my birthday on Friday (btw-thank you for the calls and birthday posts, all of them where greatly appreciated!) from PA. Brennen is bring some of his medieval books that I am dying to get so I can makes notes and stuff about armor and swords for Aradon. Lele and I can't wait to show off the pigs to them! I have a story about them, so bear with me. Anyway, we are gonna have loads of fun, watch Eragon, chill with the guineas, and I might let Brenn read some of my book...hhhmmm.

Okay - 'bout da guinea pigs. I was researching breeding and was not very happy about what I read. After breeding, boars get very dominate, and only the 'big guy' is allowed to breed. Breeding a sow will also shorten her life span to 4 years, so that was out. I asked experts questions, read blogs about breeding, copied tons of articles, and drowned myself in a guinea pig book. So guinea pig breeding is totally out of our range. Not to mention the fact that sows often die while giving birth and still births are very common.

The real thing I wanted to tell you was this: I was up about four (but not on purpose) because Gilbert and Snuggles where being very loud while chirping incessantly, chewing on bars and their castle and dumping food EVERYWHERE! You would never believe how loud guinea pigs can be, they are almost as bad as parakeets! Anyway, I could not fall back asleep until finally the noise got MUCH louder from under the blanket we drape over their cage. This actually woke Leah up and she looked at me and was like, "I think they just had a fight." So I went to go see which one had been murdered. Mind you, this is about 4:30 in the morning. I found them staring at each other and chattering their teeth. Guinea pig boars often raise their hair on their necks, sway their hips, chatter, and yawn to display their teeth when angry. The thing that really was scary was that the wooden castle had been thrown upside-down during their tiff. That was what had caused the argument. As far as we can tell, Gilbert was probably in their and would not budge until Snuggles started to push him out and they somehow tipped the thing over and went for each other in defense. So we both took our own pig and sat with them on our beds for about ten minutes until they had calmed down. But whenever we tried to get them used to each other, Snuggles would chatter again.

It ended up that we put Snuggles back in the cage and I had Gilbert in a laundry basket next to my bed for the rest of the night. We have never been up with them before and we laughed about how it was like they where real babies! *lol* They are being nice to each other again this morning with allot of coaxing and veggies. I'm gonna ask Daddy to pick up a new castle for them at lunch. The tube obviously does not satisfy their needs.

G2G-Hanna