Guinea Pig Comes To Stay – Prologue, Epilogue, And Toilet Humor

Safari Kid has a Guinea Pig Weekend Program (:D I just like calling it that) where students can opt to host the school pet, filling in his travel journal as well. Both Rockstars had been on about this, the Miss because she took an early shine to Guinea Pig (yes his real name) from class, and Rockstar who came across the instructional handout we get with school reports (which btw come complete with a checklist of which alphabets/ numbers she can or can’t recognize, just we’ve been quite laid back about these specifics because at that age Rockstar didn’t even get a checklist from his preschool so to us the existence of a checklist is already quite good :D).

That would be this.

The above, which Rockstar read carefully, is besides the detailed email support you get, when you email your child’s teacher with queries about caring for this thing. Which is excellent, since I had to first grapple with whether I could keep a Guinea Pig alive for a weekend. (Never had a GP; had hamsters, an albino rat, a very unfriendly large rabbit, but I have this idea GPs are quite different from all these.)

The cage is empty; Guinea travels in a cardboard box for safety!

From hearing about friends’ GPs, I had formed an impression that GPs poop way more than my hamsters and don’t seem to mind stepping in it – plus, they have larger and longer claws. This actually bothers me about GPs, which is why I would not get one as a pet – which then makes me very happy to do this relatively low-commitment weekend thing. (We’re just never getting one ourselves. It’s nice for my kids however to be able to play Been There Done That).

(I had up to 16 hamsters at one time in upper primary school, because I determinedly bred a few litters and kept the babies my good friends didn’t adopt, after the “two females” the pet shop sold us ate their first litter because I was unprepared. It is a promise I have made to Rockstar, that someday if called upon I will help him with some breeding hamster school project when he’s older. Speaking of which, I was handling Guinea with the full on kid gloves, but in hind sight I think he’s actually a lot less fragile than my hamsters were – I remember them as much faster than Guinea, climbing everywhere, having absolutely no respect for heights – then when they fall wrong they die. Ok actually I told Rockstar they die pretty easily and he has to get used to that – basically he’s had rodent on the brain this whole last weekend, it turns out he really likes rodents).

Anyway back to toilet habits. I considered GPs one of those Go Home Evolution, You Are Drunk moments. (Do GPs even exist in the wild any more? No? Well then WHO is going to want a pet that is one big pooping machine? (Evolution can create an animal that produces cube-shaped poop so it doesn’t roll off cliffs, it can’t do something about the otherwise very sweet and cute GP?)

For real though, (and more importantly), Guinea did not nip once, the entire time the kids were handling him and occasionally bickering over whose turn it was to cuddle him. In which case, what’s a little poop between friends? 🙂 My hamsters, rat and rabbit have all inflicted some bad bites on me – the rodents because they were fighting or weren’t yet used to handling, the rabbit because she was a real b*tch. (Sorry, but she really was.)

Thing is, I considered this stint a really good parenting opportunity (but I was so exhausted) because when it’s something this exciting to the kids, they’re gonna bicker, no matter how well they get along. I was also trying to communicate the whole Stay Calm When The Thing Starts Kicking bit – we’ve probably all seen kids who don’t know how to behave around animals, screaming their heads off or stampeding about the place until the creature’s heart pops, and somehow I just badly wanted the Rockstars to learn to be gentle with small animals. (But not have to get one myself haha)

Rockstar in particular, though he spends time with JD after school, would probably otherwise be on the computer at home any chance he gets, or devouring Geronimo Stilton books – new habit; in less than 4 weeks he’s gone through almost 20, after finding his first in the school library. (Since he was very heavily skewed toward non-fiction before, I’m trying not to be too alarmed at the lopsided-ness, and assume he will be back to normal when he runs out of new books – which should be quite soon, at this rate. And yes throughout, he has to maintain his Chinese too…)

Rockstar was a little sad when he woke and had to say goodbye to Guinea before school… (but in general he’s also grumpy when woken up early)

And he got over it in like, 10 minutes – then he picked up his Speed Stacks to get on the bus 

Guinea ended up playing in our bedroom twice a day, and here’s the caveat – he really does poop and pee a lot. Every single time we took him out. The record stands at 4 times in an hour+, though now I realize he barely peed in his own cage, so maybe the peeing on our bedroom floor is because he’s male (i.e. he’s “marking”) and the scent of another pet is everywhere – JD sleeps in a basket at the foot of our bed.

Rockstar didn’t know whether to laugh or dance around ballistic when straight-faced, the Miss told him there was poop on his foot. She proceeded to raise her eyebrows and go, “Calm down, Ko-ko,” as he spluttered. When, still with raised eyebrows, she bent down and picked the poop off him with her bare hands, I ended up being the one who nearly had a heart attack. 

This the Miss btw, looking at her “homework” with Guinea before the bus came

She walked him in to school fine…

Though I do think she misses him a little… Neither one wants him permanently btw, because they do say they want to “play other games too” but both definitely want him to visit again

Because I’m anal and germ-freaky, I changed the bedding and cleaned his cage twice a day (didn’t want our helper to touch it in case I ended up having to send the Email Of Shame to my little girl’s school telling them we killed the school pet – a former helper accidentally chopped part of my rat’s tail off in those drawers at the bottom of some cages that allow you to clean it better).

So despite my germ-freaky, this is why I think you should totally try it, host the school GP if you have one:

a) A school pet probably has a much more even temper and temperament around little kids, or it isn’t going to be a school pet. Well, d-uh, but my first thought in taking the thing for the weekend was, it must have a tried and true temperament. Before my hamsters were tamed, they really bit. And us parents can be insane, and not all of us even like rodents. A thing that looks vaguely like a rat with a half-baked Elvis hairdo belonging to the school punctures the skin on a precious toddler’s hands and there’s going to be angry villagers with pitchforks and torches at their doorstep. Fried Guinea Pig.

So, School Pet is probably better even, than borrowing your friend’s pet – a school pet would’ve been used to lots and lotsa little humans stomping about every day, making those noises.

b) It scratches the itch for a weekend (or a few weekends). I can clean cages twice a day for a couple days, knowing this thing is going back to school come Monday – Yippee! I’m not going to be stuck cleaning cages until the thing croaks, long after my kids have tired of playing with it.

(If you really want a pet,just get a dog or something else you can toilet train. JD as a 4 month old puppy toilet trained in about 5 days. When we moved to HK, that was 2.5 days, then 1.5 days tops, each time we changed apartments. Her trainer used to say, “If you were in a new place for the first time, would you know where the toilet was? It’s about communicating with the animal.” I don’t think – and please don’t let the Guinea Pig People hate me – GPs ever only go once or twice a day. All GPs should be school pets so the frequent poop clean-up can be shared among lots more people :P) 

So, the verdict is: It’s your best chance to let your kid have a Small Animal Fix sans longer commitment. 

Oh, and JD was quick to reclaim her Little Human. (To be fair though, JD didn’t react much to Guinea. He wasn’t Sheep enough, and she was pretty smug at bedtime when SHE was the one in the bedroom :D)