Chapter 38 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

Guinea Pigs - Selling & Breeding

August decided that guinea pigs were the perfect pet… as well as a business. He began developing entrepreneurial skills just as he was becoming a teenager when he and a neighbor, Eric Lanz, decided to raise and sell guinea pigs. It all started when a friend of the Lanz’s gave Eric a guinea pig, and let August purchase a long haired one that this breeder was convinced was sterile. It was not, and when this female Abysian mated with Eric’s male, and became pregnant, you’d have thought that August had discovered gold. The breeder, who I think had a corner on the market of selling long hair guinea pigs to the local pet shops, got wind of their plans, and tried to get August to agree not to sell any of the offspring, as she had sold August in good faith (she thought), a barren female. August was the most assertive of my children, and felt he had bought this pig fair and square, and had no intentions of having this breeder dictate to him as to what he could or could not do.

August and Eric had me drive them to a little print shop in Endicott, where they ordered business cards. They set up their breeding farm in the garage in a portable cage. In good weather they would set the cage out on a platform under the back steps with an exit through 12 ft long black plastic corrugated pipes (usually for leach fields and drainage pipes) to a fenced in yard on the back lawn. They were able to pick up the pipe at the lumber yard, were and cost about the same as those small 12 inch long Habit-Trails which was sold for hamsters at pet shops. They got more of the pipes so the guinea pigs could run through them from one place to another just for the fun. The chicken wire enclosures in the yard were portable, so they could move their outer premises for better grazing. They were beginning to pick up some pet shop customers.

…Then with one horrible fateful incident they were wiped out of business!

August’s sister had a way of bringing home dogs and other animals, with the excuse, “It just followed me home, can we keep it?” She had met friends for a picnic in a park a few miles away, and when she got bored, she decided to walk home. A frisky handsome Husky joined her. She yelled at him to “go home!” But, it still tagged along. I think she may have asked someone nearby in a yard if it was their dog, and it wasn’t. Nevertheless, by the time she got home, it was evening, and getting dark, so I said we’d go back first thing in the morning, since I knew no one in the area I could call to see if they knew where this dog’s home was. Wendy was always very accepting of whatever new pet came into the house …even a stray dog. The Husky seemed to have good habits, so no one was thinking about anything but for him not to soil the carpet when we let him out to do his thing.

I happened to be downstairs at the time. We had a walk out basement to the back yard and to the guinea pig set up. Suddenly I was aware of a commotion underneath the back steps where the guinea pig’s cage was set up. I flipped on the back light and saw the husky’s back and tail and realized he had actually jumped right into the guinea pig’s cage. I then snapped into action, opening the door, grabbing at the dog, and yelling for August, and yelling, “Help!” to anyone, while grabbing the dog around the middle to extract him from the cage while his mouth was full of guinea pig.

It was a horror story. After subduing the dog, August and I tried to take stock of the guinea pigs’ loss of life. It seemed that the dog had first jumped into the fenced in grazing area, killing a few guinea pigs, and wounding a few more which tried to scurry back into the corrugated pipe. Then he jumped into the cage where most had cuddled together for the night. Killing all he could, the rest took flight into the upper end of the pipe.

August and I carried the black pipe heavy with guinea pigs into the garage to their safe indoor pen… safe if one kept the garage door shut. There we reached into each end of the pipe trying to reach the frightened pigs. In one end I felt a furry warm body about elbow deep in the pipe, but was unable to extract this pig.

If the other’s were alive, there was no way of knowing--they wouldn’t make a noise. We set the pipe down, turned down the lights, hoping they would come out and left for a short time to see if any of the other bodies outside sowed any signs of life. It was a carnage. We put them all aside for burial the next day.

Returning to the garage, the black pipe was still quiet. I tried to peer into the perforations to glimpse the interior to no avail. Finally I took my Exacto knife and cut off a length of pipe just past the furry mass blocking one end. The pig that was blocking the way had dashed in after being mortally wounded, and died there. The same had happened on the other end, blocking exit to the last five living guinea pigs which finally emerged… hot and weary.

I think it was about ten pigs which had gotten slaughtered that evening by this stray husky. After a close inspection, I determined that the remaining were going to be okay.

The indoor area had been atop a pool table which had been carefully protected by a tarp from any harm on which the cage was set when weather didn’t permit them to be outdoors.

The next morning, someone tied the husky outdoors in front. In the course of the morning’s activities, Aug’s dad opened the garage door, to take the car down to Vestal Center to get the Sunday Times. The husky chewed through the rope freeing himself, found the rest of the guinea pigs, vulnerable to him in the open garage, and killed off the remaining pigs.

This was to be the single most horrible event in August’s childhood. It seemed so unfair that this would happen, dashing his plans for his first business, and killing his beloved pets. When writing about this later, I didn’t think he appreciated being even reminded of this terrible event.

To add to the horror, Al, who was a city orientated adult, knew nothing about burying animals, and dug too shallow a grave, but piled on rocks thinking that would do it. Wendy was never very interested in the guinea pigs while they were alive, but easily moved away the rocks, and dug them up now that they were getting rather ripe. I hated to criticize Al’s job, as he did the dirty job that neither August nor I had the stomach for… but this resurrecting of the dead pigs was too much. I insisted he dig a deeper hole and dispose of them properly. We finally saw the last of the guinea pigs. The next time August tried to sell things to make money was a few summers later when he and Johnny Frisch built a wired off area in the garage where they set up office, sitting behind the wire, and selling candy and soda through an opening in the fence, much like a bank cashier's set up. It was much more lucrative, and much less heart-breaking. They even filed their earnings for the summer and paid their taxes.

Postscript: The husky which sensed no shame, retaining that sense of being innocent and loveable, was returned to its owners later on that Sunday. I’ve never wanted a husky as a pet since this wolfish beast gave no thought to doing away with all of August’s sweet little guinea pigs. August still begrudges the whole incident… much like my brother Jerry’s never forgiving us for having two of his pet ducks for Thanksgiving so many years ago in his childhood in Woburn; much like the way I still grieve over the loss of my most loved dog, Kiyoodle. I don’t know why we harbor the hurt over these incidents which don’t add up to a hill of beans on a worldly scale of things, but we humans are sometimes blessed, yet also cursed with a tender heart that cannot forget when something seems to cut us to the core, leaving a wound that is tender each time we go back to that spot.