Guinea Pig Story

It all started in 1997. We were "pig-sitting" a friend's guinea pig, named Mo, who is a wire-hair guinea pig. He is almost completely brown with a white patch on his forehead. He is adorable. Mo was staying with us for one to two weeks, and that was long enough for my brother to fall in love with him. Soon he started asking for a guinea pig for Christmas. Guess what he got. Sure, he got a guinea pig, but guess what else. Three extras. We believe that his guinea pig, now named Guinea, was old enough to get pregnant before she was taken from the pet store. In any event, we ended up with three little furballs.

They were born in the night, as are most guinea pigs. I can still remember when my brother looked in Guinea's cage the morning of March 1st, and he saw a ball of white go streeking across the cage. He went into the next room and I overheard him say to my mom, "Mom, either I'm dreaming or Guinea had babies!" After hearing this, I sacrificed my nice, warm bed and got up to look. Sure enough, there were three little furballs.

I guess I should explain: guinea pigs are born with fur so that they can survive better. They are also born with their eyes open and can eat adult food within hours of birth. Guinea pigs are able to be weened from their mother at the age of one month.

We were allowed to hold the new guinea pigs within a few hours of their discovery. Within a month, we had bonded with the three guinea pigs, and they had grown larger. Their mother was smaller than average, so they were also small. One of them still hasn't grown much since weening.

By that time, we had had Guinea for around three months and the others for one month, and in that time I had decided that I wanted one. In fact, when we first "discovered" the new guinea pigs, I said, "Mom, can I keep one?" and she either said "I'll see," or "Yes."

At one month old, they were old enough for us to determine their genders. My father did the job, since he is a physician.

The decided oldest, Blaze, named after his mark on his forehead, was male. The rest of Blaze's body was a gray/silver color.

The middle guinea pig was decided to be female. Her name was Brownie, named after her brown head. She had a brown head with a white mark upon her forehead. The rest of her body was white, with gray spots on her back. Brown feet only make her more adorable.

The youngest was a boy, accidentally discovered by me. He was named Silver, after the few silver patches on his back. Silver was the smallest of the three.

Blaze was given to my brother's teacher at the time. Sadly, his son was too afraid that Blaze would bite him and would never hold him. Blaze was later relocated to the home of one of my classmates. Renamed as Dude, he was not treated very well there, and he eventually died because of the poor conditions.

I had to keep Brownie whether I liked her or not because Brownie was decidedly a female, therefore she could share a cage with Guinea.

Silver went to a close friend of mine, whose mother is a close friend of my mom's. In fact, these are the same people who owned Mo. They have taken excellent care of Silver, later renamed as Kibbles. Kibbles is allowed to socialize with Mo. They live inside their owner's den during the winter, and they spend their summers in the porch. They have regular guinea pig cages during most days, and on nicer days Mo and Kibbles can sun bathe in their outside cage equipped with water bottles and bowls of alph alpha pellets. I can tell from their excellent care that their owner loves them very much.

July 10, 1998. Guinea performed another birthing session. This time 4 furballs, but one was a stillborn, meaning it was dead at birth. We named the stillborn Kenny, for the character in the TV Comedy Show, South Park. Kenny dies in every episode.

There were 2 albino guinea pigs. Albinos are born with white fur and pink eyes and ears. They are very easily sunburnt, so you have to be careful. We weren't expecting any guinea pigs at all, let alone albinos. Guinea is a very dark colored guinea pig, and Brownie only has some white genes. When we were sitting in my brother's room, where we keep the guinea pigs, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something white protruding from Guinea's rear end. I looked again and I saw Guinea giving birth.

After a guinea pig is born, they are covered in the embryotic sac, which will suffocate them if the sac is not removed. The mother guinea pig will pull off the sac with her teeth and then eat it, getting nutrients back so she will remain healthy.

When the first one was born, I suggested the name Pinky, because of the pink ears.

The next born was a brown guinea pig, but when wet the guinea pig looked black. I suggested the name Blackie, because it is close to Brownie, then my guinea pig. My mom pointed out to me that that wasn't a good choice since she was probably only black at the time because she happened to be wet. We decided to wait with the naming of #2 until later.

The third guinea pig was another albino. Since we couldn't have them both named Pinky, I suggested giving the name Pinky to the 2nd albino and giving the name Lucky to the 1st albino, because I was lucky to see the birthing process.

Later on, while putting the new guinea pigs out with their mother on our lawn to feed, my mother suggested the name Jasper, the name of one of the cats we had before I was born.

Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, we took all 3 of the new guinea pigs to a local pet shop to determine their gender. They were all female. Jasper and Pinky were both born with birth defects, because of the inbreeding. Pinky had an extra toe on one of her hind feet and Jasper had and extra toe on each of her hind feet. Jasper also tended to run in circles. For these reasons, I took Jasper.

The pet shop was allowed to keep the other 2. Instead of being paid for them, we had them promise that they would go to a good home.

I now call Jasper Jazzy for short. She looks just like her mother, but only about 2/3 of the size.

January 9, 2002. On Wednesday, January 9th, 2002, Brownie was put to sleep. He was less than two months short of turning four years old. We believe that he had some type of tumor. It grew in spurts, one of which was near January 9th. It had enlarged his abdomen area by quite a bit and was cutting off the nutrition that was supposed to go to the rest of his body. He became very skinny everywhere else. We didn't want him to suffer and so we put him to sleep before he started feeling pain. He now rests at the base of a very large white pine near here with a beautiful rock marking his grave. He's happy now.

July 3, 2002. Guinea died today of unknown causes. She would have been five years old on September 25.

August 19, 2002. We are pleased to announce that we have two new additions to our guinea pig herd: Shadow and Phyrnne (pronounced like the word "fern"). Shadow was born on June 20 and Phyrnne on July 3. Shadow is all black except for a few markings. She's a shorthair and very personable. Phyrnne is mostly grey except for a white belly and white markings on her face around her eyes and ears. Her hair is longer than most shorthairs', but shorter than a longhairs. She's too young to decide if she will definitely be a "people-pig," but we believe that she will. Check out their pictures at http://www.griflet.com/pictures/pets/.

April 20, 2003. Jazzy died on February 18, 2003. She was struggling with massive hair loss as well as itchy skin. It must have been a fungal infection because the other two caught it, but we started their treatment early enough that they survived and are now fully healthy.