{"id":2773,"date":"2019-04-27T15:06:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T20:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=2773"},"modified":"2019-10-31T16:15:06","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T21:15:06","slug":"my-life-in-guinea-pigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/my-life-in-guinea-pigs\/","title":{"rendered":"My Life in Guinea Pigs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Harsh Reality<\/strong><\/p>\n

I found the guinea pig nestled in the back corner of the linen closet.\u00a0 He had escaped from his cage a couple of days before, at least that\u2019s when somebody noticed he was gone, because my brother had lost interest in his pet.\u00a0 My mother organized a search party.<\/p>\n

He stared up at me from his comfortable nest of shredded toilet paper.\u00a0 I admired his ingenuity and thought perhaps he was relishing his freedom.\u00a0 Then I spotted two crayons next to him, a red and a blue one.\u00a0 I could see tiny teeth marks striating the crayon tip.<\/p>\n

At ten years old, this was my first introduction to the harsh world of survival.\u00a0 This guinea pig thought he could survive on crayons.<\/p>\n

In my secure and tidy suburban world, the idea that some didn\u2019t have enough to eat was a novel concept.\u00a0 This was in the early 1960s and the post-war deprivations lingered in my parents\u2019 minds.\u00a0 I remember my mother saying, \u201cFinish your dinner, there are people starving in Armenia.\u201d\u00a0 Why she particularly chose Armenia was a mystery and her logic escaped me.\u00a0 As I looked\u00a0into guinea pig\u2019s beady eyes, I saw starvation.\u00a0 I had saved him from a slow and agonizing death.<\/p>\n

Convenient Lies and Willful Ignorance<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Christmas morning my four brothers and I would rush into the living room to see the vast array of presents, both under the Christmas tree and in our designated spots on the sofa and chairs.\u00a0 After the initial flush of excitement, \u00a0we all looked at others\u2019 piles to see if everything was equal.\u00a0 My mother knew this, but this balancing act was tricky.\u00a0 She would peruse the piles on Christmas Eve as she laid out the gifts and would address any mismatch by switching gifts around.\u00a0 If that didn\u2019t work, she might leave a note describing a make-good gift for the underserved.\u00a0 That\u2019s how my brother got his cat, and I assume that\u2019s how someone acquired another guinea pig.<\/p>\n

Any delight in the rodent was fleeting.\u00a0 Nobody wanted to take care of it.\u00a0 My mother was left to cope with sprayed woodchips, little pellets and the odor of urine.\u00a0 She probably hoped the guinea pig would get lost in the house again, but more aggressive measures were required when the guinea pig survived until summer.\u00a0 \u201cHey everybody,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve got a great idea.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we let the guinea pig out for the summer?\u00a0 He can eat the grass and stuff, and then in the fall we\u2019ll find him and bring him back inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even my youngest brothers, eight or nine at the time, must have know we were dooming our pet to a premature and violent death at the hands of our dogs, a fox or a coyote.\u00a0 The slightest show of remorse by anyone would have scuttled the scheme.<\/p>\n

But we collectively grabbed onto the convenient lie.<\/p>\n

We tacitly convinced ourselves we were acting in the best interests of the guinea pig who would surely value a cage-free life.\u00a0 In mid-summer I spotted him behind a bush.\u00a0 He looked happy and well-fed.\u00a0 The days grew shorter.\u00a0 Summer faded into fall.\u00a0 I briefly thought of the guinea pig, experiencing frost for the first time, shivering in his little nook, but it was too late to right the wrong, there was no search party.\u00a0 Collectively our convenient lie had segued to willful ignorance.<\/p>\n

Individually, convenient lies and willful ignorance are vital human skills to help us through tough days, but this was my first experience of lethal nature of the collective and casual combination of the two.\u00a0 When everyone is at fault, no one is.<\/p>\n

A Personal Vow<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was working full-time when our children were in grade school.\u00a0 Most mothers worked part-time or had flexible schedules.\u00a0 They relished school drop-off when they would gather over a cup of coffee.\u00a0 I was never able to participate in these bonding moments and felt disconnected from the school scene.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0 tried to make amends and participate.\u00a0 In a weak moment of selective amnesia, I \u00a0agreed to host the class guinea pig for the summer.\u00a0 Within a week, I was sick of the damn thing and predictably my kids had lost interest.\u00a0 Taking a lesson from my mother, I decided to let it go free, but with a twist.\u00a0 I knew I\u2019d be ostracized if I returned an empty cage to the school in the fall, so I built what looked like a sturdy enclosure in the back yard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The guinea pig escaped as I transferred it outside.\u00a0 Guinea pigs were slow moving objects, weren\u2019t they?\u00a0 How fast could they move on those little stubby paws?\u00a0 This one bolted, streaked across the lawn and scurried under the porch.\u00a0 I lay on my stomach to peer under the porch and saw him crouched against the house\u2019s foundation.\u00a0 eyes.\u00a0 I was in a contest of wills with a guinea pig.\u00a0 My children\u2019s school reputation was at stake.<\/p>\n

I inched my way forward in an agonizing army crawl through rocks and rubble until he was trapped.\u00a0 I nabbed him.\u00a0 The guinea pig emitted breathless squeals, and I realized I\u2019d better loosen my grip.\u00a0 Passively letting a guinea pig die a death of freedom is one thing, strangling it another.<\/p>\n

At that moment, I vowed never again to allow any pet into our home that pooped inside.\u00a0 No cat, guinea pig, hamster, mouse, reptile.\u00a0 I was not cut out to be a genial guinea pig steward.<\/p>\n

The Future<\/strong><\/p>\n

I thought my journey with guinea pigs was complete.\u00a0 Then I heard they are a staple of the Peruvian diet, particularly in the Andean highlands.\u00a0 Guinea pigs have been domesticated for thousands of years and serve as an important source of protein for highlanders.\u00a0 Peruvians eat some sixty-five million guinea pigs per year, often in elaborate cultural rituals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They can be raised in a small area, even in urban environments, and are twice as efficient in converting food into protein.\u00a0 Heifer International, which focuses on providing sustainable livestock to rural communities, is now promoting guinea pig husbandry.\u00a0 Two males and twenty females can create a sustainable source of protein for a family of six.<\/p>\n

Will guinea pigs begin to show up in the meat section of the grocery store or on restaurant menus?\u00a0 Unlikely.\u00a0 Americans have trouble eating anything resembling a pet.\u00a0 French grocery stores are filled with rabbit, but in this country, rabbits are endeared as bunnies and\u00a0have a starring role at Easter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the movie Roger and Me, the director Michael Moore interviews a woman who is selling bunnies for pets\u00a0or rabbits for food, she doesn\u2019t care which.\u00a0 The customer decides the rabbit\/bunny\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

In one horrifying scene the woman fondly pets a bunny and then calmly whacks it with a lead pipe, skins and guts it.\u00a0 She displays no remorse, no recognition of the bright line between a pet and protein source.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Would I eat a guinea pig?\u00a0 Sure I would, either baked, roasted, fried or barbecued.\u00a0 I\u2019m not driven by revenge or in search of bizarre food credentials, and it would take some psychological rewiring for me to bludgeon one to death.\u00a0 However, the fact that guinea pigs are an alternative to carbon-costly beef cannot be ignored.\u00a0 I anticipate the day when everyone will need their own personal emergency protein supply, either a dovecote with pigeons on the roof, a hutch of rabbits, or a herd of guinea pigs on our back patios.<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Harsh Reality I found the guinea pig nestled in the back corner of the linen closet.\u00a0 He had escaped from his cage a couple of days before, at least that\u2019s when somebody noticed he was gone, because my brother … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-in"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-IJ","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2773"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2786,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2773\/revisions\/2786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}