Chapter 28 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

SKITTERY

Skittery was a gentle guinea pig I got for the children [?]. Again, I think I enjoyed the little pets I bought for the children as much as they did, and having to clean up their cages, I paid them much more attention. I realized he would not escape from an area like a table top because of the drop, so I built him a little plywood yard with a simulated fence around it and a wooden plywood barn, complete with gambrel roof and painted the roof green, and the barn red. A generous supply of cedar chips absorbed his waste, but also fell to the floor around the area… So, I was therefore more embarrassed than complimented when a friend would drop in and comment about the cute set-up. Looking back, it must have struck anyone who saw it as clever. I was just too insecure at the time to appreciate my own creative talents… or any talents that had nothing to do with housewifery.

Guinea pigs don’t need much exercise and are easy pets to keep, unlike hamsters which are always acting like they’d like to escape. But I liked taking Skittery out on excursions. He loved grass, and, unlike celery, it was free. But when I’d feed Skittery celery, he was like a cute bean-making machine. The celery would slowly be chewed through one end--like feeding a branch through a wood-chipper--and his beans would come neatly out the other end.

The shrubs we had put in when we moved in and hired a landscaper, gave Skittery shade and shelter from being seen by a passing dog or wild animal. I learned that he would not go out to the open lawn, so on nice days I’d just place him under these bushes to skitter around, mowing the grass along the edge of his sheltering evergreens. Later I’d look for him, finding him easily, and put him back in his barnyard. After awhile he began getting a little wild and difficult to catch. They can run pretty fast when they want to. I almost decided not to let him roam under the bushes any longer. But I thought it was easier to let him have a little freedom than to be constantly vacuuming up the cedar chips that fell around his barnyard set-up… And, his incessant squeaking made it clear he was asking to go outside again.

One day I could not locate him anywhere, and had to leave him out overnight. The next day I found him, but could no longer catch him. He knew enough to go under the area where the prickly junipers were too thick to reach him. If I tried wriggling on my belly, he’d run away by the time I got near. I simply left out his guinea-pig pellets, and water, and kept trying to catch him, but on the third day he was gone.

I figured an owl or a dog caught him. But, months later, when talking to a neighbor over a cup of coffee, she told me about this odd earless rabbit she saw in the woods one day, not a squirrel, as it had no tail and was grey and white. She hadn’t realized it was my guinea pig, as she didn’t know “the kids” had a guinea pig, nor that someone would have a guinea pig running free outside. I began to wonder what would have happened to him out in the wild. If he even made it until winter, the cold weather would have killed him. Why couldn’t I learn that if I give an animal too much freedom it would revert back to being wild--even a mild-mannered guinea pig.