Yes I said Guinea Pigs! Tommy wanted ONE guinea pig, just one little, teeny, tiny, baby guinea pig, just a cute little guinea pig! So we got him one.....HE was a HE, his name was Kevin, HE was cute and sweet and made cute little guinea pig squeals....he loved carrots, and celery, and his little pellet food! Then one day it happened....Tommy came running down the stairs after taking a shower yelling, "MOM....MOM....Kevin! It's Kevin!!!" I asked him what was wrong with Kevin? FYI in the past we have had several guinea pigs, some were just great others were so lovable, they were loved to death! So my first fear was that Kevin was our latest victim. NO!! not this time! Tommy: "MOM! Kevin just had babies!" I looked at him like he had just swallowed a bird! WHAT? Yes mom, Kevin just had babies!" So I ran upstairs only to find 2 "big" babies in Kevin's cage. I asked Tommy how long they had been in there, since there was no way that Kevin could have possibly produced two babies of "that" size. He told me that he had just gone in to take a shower, and Kevin was jumping all over his cage, and when he got out of the shower there they were, two babies the size of adult hamsters. So, of course, I ran to the computer to google what baby guinea pigs look like, and sure enough they come out the size of a fat hamster, all haired up, eyes wide open, and to my great surprise, ready to eat. This is what started a large snowballing effect of guinea pig-mania!
Trying to tell the sex of a guinea pig is more like trying to tell a child why algebra will be important in their life one day. It's almost IMPOSSIBLE!!!! The boys and girls each have a small Y "down there" but the boy "Y" has a dot the size of a microscopic amoeba! And that's the tell tail sign of "yes I'm a boy!" But the logical way to find out which one is a boy, is to figure out which one never gets pregnant....or at least that was our way to find out! So 19 baby guinea pigs later.....we singled out the gigolos'!
Many days we would be in the room with the guinea's spreading open their little legs with a magnifying glass trying to see the "dot".....and many times we thought we saw it and would separate that one out, only to find out 3 weeks later, yes this is yet another lady! One had 4 babies, one had 3, one had 2 and so on and so forth! It was like a guinea a day was having babies! Don't get me wrong, they are adorable and so much fun to play with, and more than that so much fun watching mother nature take it's course....but somewhere out in the wild I would have enjoyed Mother Nature to take this course! Guinea's can produce up to 5 litters per year and ours seemed to be following that rule well!
We have been able to sell some, adopt some out, and keep some....we are down to 4 ladies and 2 men! One of my guinea's is a "special needs" piggy! One day Snowball was standing in the corner of her cage looking out....I thought "oh how cute!" and walked away. A couple of hours later my daughter came in and said "Mom did you see Snowball standing in the corner of the cage? Isn't she cute?" I realized it had been a lot of time since I first saw her there, so I went to her cage only to find out that she was STUCK in the corner, HOOKED to the bar of the cage by her tooth! Yes, she is a half blind, half deaf, albino, hooked tooth guinea pig!!!! Only in my family would we be blessed with a Half Blind, Half Deaf, Albino, Special Needs Guinea Pig! So I unhooked her from the corner of the cage, looked at her tooth and realized that it was almost an inch long and turned up like a fish hook! So I called the vet, and asked, what I thought was a ridiculous question! "So does anyone over there take Guinea Pigs on as patients?" And they said "YES of course we do!" Sure why not I thought! So I dragged Snowball over to the vet to see about this tooth! Apparently this is not an uncommon event with some Guinea's. Since Snowball is "special" her teeth do not touch so it allows for the top tooth to grow uncontrollably! And being the mom that I am, I just can't let her go on like this, so we now have a standing appointment to trim down the tooth about once every three months or so!
Yep!!! This is my life in a "nutt"shell! I'm a mom of 8, with a St. Bernard, 2 Cats, several fish, turtles, lizards, and more guinea pigs than a normal person would put up with....but who ever said I was normal?
No comments:
Post a Comment