Guinea Pigs

When I was ten years old my parents bought me and my brother a pair of guinea pigs which we promptly named Spots and Tails, respectively, even though they had neither spots nor discernible tails. We truly did love those little guys and spent several weeks handling them regularly until they became tame enough to teach a few simple tricks. After a couple months, we had them trained well enough to leave their cages and run around the living room so long as we kept an eye on them. What we didn’t realize is that Spots and Tails were not two little “guys” but rather a guy and a girl; this discovery being made one morning when we discovered nine pink little bodies, eyes closed and hairless, huddled together next to Tails.

Turned out, we were now the proud parents of an entire little of baby guinea pigs. While my brother and I were quite excited my parents were not nearly as thrilled; what we saw as the addition of nine new pets to our little guinea pig family all my parents could see was the bill that more mouths to feed would bring as well as the price of a larger cage and the possibility of more litters. Ironically, things worked out much worse as the cage eventually tipped over and several guinea pigs escaped into the house, prompting our parents to call an exterminator and thus ended our time as guinea pig aficionados.