Despite all these losses, I still wanted a guinea pig, and so I called the local Humane Society and asked if they had any guinea pigs, and it turns out that they had a mother and her baby. Stephen, being younger, was granted the first pick, and he claimed the baby, even before we saw them. When we saw them, he changed his mind and decided that he really wanted the mother. We took them home, and came up with the name Blackberry for the mother, whose coat was mostly black, and Sage for the baby, because it was now a tradition to name my pigs after spices, and I liked the name Sage. We had great times, letting them run around, eat grass, ravenously devour treats, and so on, but due to my still great ignorance of the care of guinea pigs, we were unsure of when to separate them, since Sage was a male. In the end we had an unfortunate case of incest (which, fortunately, isn’t as bad in guinea pigs as it is in humans), in the form of Sawdust and Chocolate.

In the first couple of days you are supposed to let the babies have peace and quiet and leave them along, but that was impossible. We had watch them, since they were so cute. This was three more guinea pigs than Mom really wanted, so she made us choose two guinea pigs that we would have to get rid of. Sage, at this point, was the most unpopular, especially considering that we had three females, so he was going to go. We were sure we wanted to keep Black, and we hated to part with either Saw or Choc, but in the end it was decided that Chocolate, who was a little less settled than Sawdust, would go. Dad and I put Sage and Chocolate in their cages, and we drove off to a pet store that Dad had gotten most of our previous guinea pigs at, and thought was a nice place. We went in, and while I stood the shamefacedly, Dad told the nice lady that we had a couple pigs to many, and asked if they wanted Sage and/or Chocolate.

She said that they didn’t have room for Sage, but that if we came after Christmas, they would probably have room to use him as a breeder (this would probably have been fine with Sage, if not me). They did, however, have room for Chocolate, and she held Chocolate for a little while she was talking to Dad, and Chocolate, in one last pitiful attempt at escaping the fate that we had bestowed upon her, tried to pee on the lady. The lady was too quick for her, though, and it all just went onto the floor, where the lady said she would clean it up later, thus defeating Chocolate’s late attack. She showed us the cage with two other pig in it where Chocolate would stay, and we eventually went back to the car and went to another pet store, where there was also no room for The Crunchable Pig (Sage). We finally went home, having abandoned the pig we liked, and kept the one we didn’t. We never did go back after Christmas to see if they still wanted Sage.

Things went along, and fall turned into winter, and winter turned into spring, and spring turned into summer, and I went off to French Creek Bible Conference, a summer camp, and during an especially hot day while I was away Steve took Black, Saw, and Sage outside to munch on some grass. After a while, a thought stuck him — it was really hot outside, so why not bring the pigs back inside, and give them a nice cool bath, to relieve them from the heat? So he went out and caught Blackberry and Sawdust, but Sage escaped into the hedges, so Steve left him there and put Black and Saw into the cold water in the tub, where they died from the shock. Apparently their little hearts couldn’t take the abrupt change in temperature… Sage had — up to this point — been a rather jittery pig, but now that there were no female guinea pigs around, he calmed down, and is now quite quiet and happy and tame, which was one good thing from the tragedy. It was also good that we gave Chocolate to the store, since it meant that she didn’t share the fate of Black and Saw.

Blackberry had become the family’s favorite, and was the only one that Ben would hold, and for months afterwards, he would ask where Blackberry (he called her blackmomma, probably because she was the mother of Sage, Chocolate, and Sawdust, and was black) was. Although devastated by this accident, I still wanted to get a companion pig for Sage, and Steve and I embarked upon a crusade to wear down Mom’s resistance to a second pig… she had finally gotten her ideal — one guinea pig — and was determined to keep it at one. We were finally ordered to reign in the fervor of our jihad against only having a solitary guinea pig, but I continued to wage a subtle cold war, constantly delving up articles and opinions from various sites and people on the internet that pointed out that guinea pigs are herd animals, they get less bored and depressed when they have companions, and so on.

During the Christmas season hopes were very high, and I trod lightly upon the subject, since I wanted it to be made known that I had not forgotten about a second pig, and that I hadn’t changed my mind, but I by no means wished to antagonize those who could make my wishes true, especially at such an auspicious time. Christmas came, and I awoke before everyone else, and went up to play on the computer for a while, until I was called down by my tardy siblings who had awoken while I was up in the office. We opened our stockings, we opened our presents, and we opened our “special” present — a DVD player (if I would get a guinea pig, it would be one of the “special” presents). I was feeling bittersweet, since I had many wonderful presents, but I had only Sage, no new guinea pigs. I of course got a guinea pig. I would not have had (wouldn’t’ve’d?) all this suspense if I didn’t. It was the last present, and again, just like nine years ago, he was in an aquarium. I named him Nutmeg, since that was the color of his coat We eventually gave give the nick name Little Guy, because we was very small compared to Sage. Mom commented later that Dad had picked a guinea pig that was on drugs or something, since he was extremely restless and tense. Nutmeg’s life was sadly short, because he mysteriously died on the fifth of January — just eleven days after I got him, and just thirteen days after Dad bought him.

Dad had gotten permission to hide Nutmeg at some elderly friends’ house, who also employ me as a baby sitter for their bible study. Once they heard of Nutmeg’s early demise, they decided to get me another guinea pig as an early birthday present. They let me decide where to go, and I, after calling all the stores in the phone book, chose to relieve a family that was suffering, if you can imagine it, from too many guinea pigs. There were lots little cute babies, and I originally wanted a baby, but since I couldn’t be sure of the gender and I wanted a male, I decided to go for a five month old. He was really quiet and also was an Abyssinian, and spent the whole drive home huddled in his pigloo (a small plastic igloo). Then came the ritual of naming him. At this point, I began to recycle names. I named him, mostly because of Mom’s insistence, Nutmeg the Second. This caused great confusion, but I think that it is all finally figured out by most people. So my chronological list of guinea pigs goes like this: