In yesterday’s post about Brock’s birthday, I wrote that we all had an unplanned surprise for his special day! Well, here it is: meet our newest guinea pig, Chip!
Now for the story: We got our first two guinea pigs back in May as part of John’s pets merit badge requirements for Boy Scouts. Dan brought them home from a pet store that assured us that both of them were females from the same litter. Weeks and then months went by, and the pigs settled into their new home, and since no baby pigs appeared, we assumed that the pet shop was right and enjoyed our girl guinea pigs.
On Thursday after Brock opened his birthday presents, I sat down at the computer to check emails, and Luke came up the stairs telling me something. You know how it is, though–most of the time, the kids come up telling me about what they did on their video game, or arguing about turns, etc., so I kind of half-listen sometimes. Such was the case as I was reading emails on my computer. Luke talked on, and I kept reading my emails. Luke turned to go back downstairs and said, “So, what should we do?” That caught my attention, so I asked Luke to repeat what he had been telling me. He said that something was underneath Snickers, and he was pretty sure it was a baby guinea pig! So, I went downstairs to check, and sure enough, there was a brand new, freshly born guinea pig!
Well, now we know that Abilene is a boy, and Snickers is a girl. We immediately had to come up with different housing arrangements! We scrounged around and found an old cage to put Abilene in until we can get something better, and left Snickers and the baby in the other cage. I have never had much luck with my pets raising babies, so I cautioned the kids not to get too excited until we could see how things were going to go. Within hours, though, that little pig was running all over the place, and Snickers was doing a great job taking care of it, so now I think it’s safe to say that we have three guinea pigs.
There is one problem: we have NO IDEA if the baby is a boy or a girl! So, this story might repeat itself in a few months. . . .
Fun!