The Guinea Blog

For those of you who don't know or haven't guessed, I am a bit of a fan of small furry critters, especially the rodent variety. Guinea Pigs (cavies) are a particular favourite and I have had the pleasure of getting to know a few of the little chaps in my time.

Recently my much loved Boys, Iggy and Chestnut died after just over 4 years of chomping, nibbling and scurrying around as well as rotund guinea pigs can. They were considered seniors so while sad, their passing wasn't unexpected.

And this has what to do with week 3 of the course?  Not a lot really, but it's as good a reason as any to post pics of guinea pigs (they're so cute!) and offer a small tribute to the Boys who gave our family lots of joy and plenty of giggles.

This is picture of Coco found on Flickr. She looks remarkably like my Boy Chestnut but without the chomp out of the right ear he carried for most of his life - the legacy of  the standard cavy testosterone surge at 10 weeks old  that saw him and Iggy suddenly battling with each other over just about everything.  It only lasted a couple of weeks and they were soon great chums again ... with a few scars each.

Iggy had hair like this
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoesa/3255754983/

looked a bit like this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/geebs/484762264/

and was generally pretty laid back and cruisy (aside from the earbiting incident - but I'm sure he was provoked).

As far as using flickr to find these pics goes ... it was pretty time consuming and hard to come across pictures to upload. I guess guinea pigs have rights, too!

Unfortunately, entering the search phrase "guinea pigs" also brought up some unsettling images of caviekebabs and guinea pig barbecue which - while a staple part of some diets, I'm sure - were a bit much for this rodent loving vego to handle. The lesson is that there's a lot of info, images and thoughts floating around in W2.0sville put there by a lot of random others with different ideas about what's good, bad, interesting or (in this case) tasty. So beware!

Miss