And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

As you may know, I went with my family to Florida for two weeks at Christmas. Of course, we could not bring our two guinea pigs with us, so we had to find a home for them for the fortnight we were away. A very nice woman lives not too far away who agreed to board the piggies for the duration, although we warned her that the white one, Yuki, was looking very thin and that's a bad sign in guinea pigs. They can suddenly waste away and die without warning and there really is not much that can be done for them. Diseases which would be cured by antibiotics in humans will kill a guinea pig, and you can't use antibiotics on them as it damages the bacteria on which their digestive system relies. So I went to Florida with the knowledge that only one guinea pig might be waiting for us on our return.

Sure enough, when we got back, the woman who minded them told us that one of the guinea pigs had died. But, surprise, it was Tonks, the healthy one, who'd passed on, and the thin one was OK and recovering. So Yuki, the white guinea pig was now on her own. It's not good to have a piggie on her own, as they are very sociable animals. So we were on the look out for another guinea pig or two.

Our local pet shop did not have any guinea pigs in for quite a while, so January and February passed with our pet surviving alone. Then in mid-February I went to the pet shop and found that they had one guinea pig, an enormously pregnant female. When were the babies due? Possibly today, was the answer. I was told to come back in a week to see what the outcome was. A week later I saw two tiny baby guinea pigs, which are really the cutest things. Many rodents have babies which are furless and helpless. Guinea pig babies, on the other hand, are born with fur and are able to jump around within a few minutes of being born. If you know the shape of a guinea pig, then the babies are like that but more so, with enormous heads and huge ears. I think it is because they are grassland creatures with no fixed homes that the babies have to be able to move and run almost as soon as they are born.

The pet shop people didn't know whether the new babies were male or female yet, and we wanted females, so we had to wait. A few weeks later I went back to see what the situation was. The two babies were definitely identified as a male and a female. This meant that the male would have to soon be separated from the mother and the female baby, as they can mate within four weeks of birth and they don't mind mating with their own family. The plan was to take the male away from the other two within the next week. But there were also two other guinea pigs in the shop, both baby females. A woman had put her name down for them, but hadn't shown up.

The pet shop owner told me that if the woman who wanted them didn't turn up by the end of the day, I could have them. On the other hand, if she did, then I could have the baby female, but I'd have to take the baby's mother as well, as the pet shop did not want to hold on to her (she was about 8 months old) and didn't want to separate them. So either way, I'd get a pair of females.

It was another half week before we got the word from the pet shop. The mysterious woman had never showed, so the two baby females were mine. I rushed out on Wednesday, my day off, with a box full of straw and was introduced to my new pets. They are "rosetted" guinea pigs, which means that their hair grows in lots of different directions, causing them to have tufts of hair and spots where the hair is in "rosettes". They look very strange, as all the pigs I've ever had before were smooth-haired. One is black, brown and a bit of white, while the other is grey and beige.

I took them home and introduced them to Yuki, the 2-year-old female. She did a bit of strutting around and chuttering, but seemed to accept them ok. She certainly didn't bite them or anything. There was a lot of sniffing going on, as each animal had to find out about the other. Eventually I reckoned it was safe to leave them together, as it normally is with female guinea pigs. Male guinea pigs, on the other hand, will normally fight each other, unless they've been reared together, in which case they consider themselves to be brothers and don't fight.

The two new piggies are still very small. They were only born around the 1st of February. They look bigger than they are because of their fluffy coats which stand out, unlike a smooth-hair whose coat is close to its body. One of them, the black, brown and white, is quite amenable to being picked up, while the other, the grey and beige, runs and wriggles and does her utmost to avoid capture. But after a few days in our company, she's getting used to it. The way to train guinea pigs to accept being picked up is to do it to them a lot.

Luckily the guinea pigs' arrival has coincided with a spell of good weather and we've been able to put them out in the back garden on the lawn (in a special protective run) quite a bit, so they've had plenty of grass. Guinea pigs are the smallest grass-eating animals on the planet and one of the very few rodents that eat grass.

We now have the difficult task of choosing names for the two new pigs. We've had various suggestions:

• Phobos and Deimos, meaning Fear and Terror, the Dogs of Ares, the god of war.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• Fog and Thunder, reflecting the grey and black colours of the two animals.

The trouble with picking a pair of matching names is that one of the two may die, leaving the other one out of place. Our very first guinea pigs were called Flora and Fauna. Poor Flora died when we only had her 4 weeks (we never figured out why) and Fauna was left as an unmatching half-pair for the rest of her long life. I think any name we choose should stand on its own as well as matching the name of the other guinea pig.

Our guinea pigs are well looked after. All the family are animal lovers, and my daughters look after their pets well. They've a hutch in the shed where they sleep, a box in the kitchen where they come in the evening to be sociable. They can leave the box and wander around the kitchen, although they rarely do, and they love the sound of people talking— it makes them feel at home. They have a large enclosure (about 6 foot by 8 foot) in the garden where they can run around; in the summer they live out there and get plenty of fresh air. There's also a run which can be placed on the lawn so that they can graze. On good days it has to be moved a few times in a day as they eat so much grass.

I'm looking forward to further getting to know our two new guinea pigs over the next few weeks and to giving them appropriate names.

Gnomon

19.03.09 Front Page

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