h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wednesday is my day off work. Some Wednesdays are good, some are bad, but they all tend to fairly full.

Today I:

Fed guinea pigs
Drop Iz down the road on her way to school
Did a bit of sub-editing on h2g2
Emptied dishwasher
Fed tortoise
Went to gym - 50-minute workout. Getting easier, but still some challenges
Cut the back grass - quite a task because the lawn has been so wet for the last three weeks that I couldn't stand on it. Today was the first day it could be attempted.
Put guinea pigs out on lawn (in fox-proof run)
Filled the bird feeders
Had lunch
Hung around while man measured back window for blinds. We've had bare windows since the extension was built two years ago.
Collected El from tram
Moved two bay trees in pots from a safe place where they'd been put to shelter from last week's storm back to the front of the house where they're supposed to be.
Put toolboxes up into attic (about 7 of them - I have lots of tools for different purposes).
Printed out a load of documents to give to the credit union so that they might lend me money tomorrow.
Hung out washing to dry, and later took it in.
Acted the host when my brother and his family arrived from Brussels - making lots of coffee
Went into Dublin with my brother, my sister, another brother and our families to a Japanese restaurant.

This was one of the good Wednesdays.

And certainly a very full day.

TRiG.

Gosh how do you manage to build a fox proof fence for your guinea pigs? If you had enough of them you wouldn't need to mow, maybe. Don't foxes dig?

It's a box with wire all around it, including underneath. We put it on the lawn and the guinea pigs can eat the grass through the plastic-coated wire on the bottom.

The previous version, without the wire on the bottom, proved that foxes can dig, as the fox dug underneath it and killed three guinea pigs.

It makes you wonder how we ever find time to go to work.

asterisks needed in such an offensive word!

How many guinea pigs do you have, Gnomon? I've always secreted wished I had a herd of them. They're so cute in herds.

We've three females. Two or three is a good number, as they get lonely on their own.

True. Back when we had them, we always had two, except for once. For some reason, Tuffet was on his own.

There was a man in England, Peter Gurney, who had over 80 guinea pigs. His whole house was converted into cages for keeping the pigs in combinations so that they could live peacefully together without fighting. He used to bring guinea pigs into the children's hospital so that the children could encounter animals - humans can not catch any diseases from guinea pigs, so it was OK to have them the hospital.

Gurney's book on guinea pig care is the best one there is.

> humans can not catch any diseases from guinea pigs

That's a great recommendation. My grandson had a pet rat, a gorgeous little piebald specimen, but they had to give it away because he got skin rashes from her.

Turtles are famous for harbouring salmonella. I remember reading that of the 11 people in the UK who died of salmonella in one particular year, 10 of them kept pet turtles.

I think guinea pigs as therapy animals is a wonderful idea.

When we lived in Cologne in the early 80s, there was a family that owned a (free) petting zoo in the green belt park area. Almost every Sunday, we'd walk through the green belt and stop at the little zoo.

They had rescued all the pets people couldn't keep: huge flight cages of budgies, parrots, bunnies, turtles, etc - even a bear they rescued from a travelling circus.

The piece de resistance was a large herd of very happy guinea pigs.

You can get allergic to guinea pigs. One of my children did. Unfortunately it was him who was in charge of them. So for the final years of their lives, it was up to me to feed, water and clean them. Actually, I rather enjoyed it.

B is very allergic to one of my current pair of guinea pigs; he also makes me sneeze a bit after a grooming session - Mycroft the guinea pig that is, not B. Mycroft has got a rather unusual coat though, he's a rex.

Pigs make great pets.

I was very surprised, the first time I heard it, to find that a guinea pig can make an out-cry as loud and strident as a myna bird when frightened or startled.

Especilly if they are threatened by feisty hamsters! Unfortuatelty since we have very aggresive predatory cats we can't keep them. Little dwarf hedgehogs can hold their own with cats, but they are relentless hunters.