… that my daughters’ guinea pigs may be about to become snake snack.
Back in February, my wife called me at work telling me that she was in a pet shop with our daughters and that they had fallen in love - mum included - with two guinea pigs. Was it ok with me if they brought them home ? I’m completely indifferent to animals. I’m certainly never going to harm them but don’t ask me to feed them, clean them or pet them. With that established, I said “Sure, let’s have them.” They soon became central to my daughters’ game. My wife absolutely loved them and I must admit that even I thought they were cute and funny (but no, I don’t need to pet them, thank you).
Fast forward to the beginning of this month. My wife started having severe breathing problems, which were soon discovered to be an allergic reaction to, you guessed it, guinea pigs. Consternation all around : we had to find them a new home. My wife loved them so much that she considered desensitisation therapy but in the end, her allergy was so bad that we asked everyone around us whether they were interested. It didn’t work, so we had only one solution left : place an ad online.
And we got an answer almost immediately. My wife got the call. Since she was heartbroken to let them go, she asked the man lots of questions. He soon cut her short and said : “OK, I’ll be honest with you. I’ll feed them to my snakes :eek:”. Obviously, she told him that she couldn’t do that.
She received another call a few hours later, a lady this time. She seemed sweet and told her that she adored guinea pigs. As a matter of fact, she already had two. As soon as my wife told me that, the smartass in me almost said : “Are you sure that she isn’t the first guy’s mum or something ?” I resisted the urge but now it’s nagging me. For the record, my wife gave them away on Tuesday and the lady has since sent her two messages, including one with pictures of the guinea pigs in their new home. So, I guess they’re fine.
But, that nasty idea is still at the back of my mind…
The first guy was honest with you, and there really isn’t that much money to be saved in committing snake food fraud. Mice are cheap. I think the pigs are fine.
As I said, I really don’t care much for animals in general, but these aren’t just any old guinea pigs : they lived with us 24/7 for over 7 months. Even a heartless guy like me thought that going from “pampered pets” to “snake snack” was wrong.
Yeah, we got a third message yesterday night with more pictures, so I guess they’re ok. But you know, I have these ideas bouncing inside my head :
The first guy was honest (but perhaps he was just being cunning, knowing that he had a way around our refusal).
The woman already had two nice guinea pigs (but you know… more snake snacks).
She seemed to genuinely love guinea pigs and hamsters. Actually ,there were a couple of other cages around (but, wait, why were they empty ?).
My wife obviously didn’t see any snake in the woman’s rather small flat (but the first guy probably lived somewhere else).
We got some pictures (but the other two guinea pigs were not in them… for some reason).
Really, the only absolutely reassuring sign is that the woman offered my wife to come and check on them with our daughters if she wanted. She wouldn’t have said that if she had planned to have them devoured, would she ?
That would be because a guinea pig’s favorite recreation is “falling over dead for no apparent reason”. The empty cages undoubtedly belong to Former Friends who woke up one morning, sniffed the air and thought to themselves … “mmm. nice day. What shall we do today I wonder? How about a nice dirt nap? Sounds great.”
There a five guinea pigs that don’t belong to me living in my basement right now, and even though having them and their food down there is keeping the mice from coming upstairs looking for food, they have to go. Aunties who show up at birthday parties for 4 year olds with a guinea pig (and all the equipment, to her credit) should be sent to desert islands. I have considered going to the nature center to see if they would like them for snake food, since no one else seems to want them and wikipedia says they can live for 12 years! Never thought of a private snake owner…hmmmmmm.
