My Guide to Rodents
My friend Tom just went and bought three mice, all females; it’s the smart way to do it. You see, mice procreate very quickly, and sometimes the parents will eat the babies. I don’t really have much experience with mice, but I know a little about guinea pigs.
I was probably about seventeen when we got our guinea pigs, one boy and one girl. For me it was just about having a pet, and to be honest I really wanted ferrets but I wasn’t allowed ferrets. For my mother it was a valuable teaching tool; these guinea pigs were pawns in my education on the facts of life. She had valid cause – I didn’t find out about sex for myself until some time later and even then I think I misunderstood because apparently I’m still doing it very wrong.
The little creatures started off marvelously; there was frolicking, there was subtle flirting, there was courting and there was sex. It was beautiful to witness. Not the sex – I’m not a weird animal pervert – I mean watching nature take place in all its wonderfulness. I think it gave me a God complex.
The first litter was born on a Christmas day and, being a wholesome person, my mother wanted to keep the family unit intact, a two parent household. That’s when things took a turn for the worse. The lascivious male had been a father for maybe fifteen minutes before he remounted. I’m glad guinea pigs are born sightless, as watching your father display such loose morality sets a very bad example. The father was put in sex rehab and the mother and new babies could be at peace, but by then it was too late.
What you can’t deny is the sheer tenacity of his sperm. Couples try for years to have babies (admittedly probably not guinea pig couples) and this guy managed to re-impregnate his missus in one clumsy, hurried effort.
She was officially knocked up; fortunately the first litter had grown up and gone to new owners by the time the second litter arrived. The bad family planning meant that they were all a bit too deformed to be given away. They were all born with alopecia; mostly covered in welts and sores and they weren’t exactly gender specific. Oh, and they were blind with beady red eyes and sallow skin.
Also, guinea pigs are particularly unscrupulous and have no sexual morality, they will literally screw anything. I tried to instill in them the same morals I had been brought up with – i.e don’t steal, and it’s probably best not to shag family members. To be fair to them I never caught them stealing so I guess they did hold onto something.
When the skin-conditioned boys started to mount their mother we knew we had to separate them; the boys went with their father while the girls stayed put. Problems arose again when the boy who had been caught shagging his mother started to be mounted by his father; we had on our hands a flaky skinned hermaphrodite.
We took a gamble and left it with dad. I mean it had what we took to be a ball sack so what were the chances it could get knocked up? It got knocked up. Cue generation three of deformed offspring. The life span of a guinea pig is maybe three years – this dad had messed up a family unit in maybe ten months. If I learned anything from these pets, it was don’t have kids…they might try to shag their mother.
There was one more litter. The sex-crazed male escaped and found his way into the female pen. He had to be forcibly removed from a female – that means prising him off, and he wasn’t just hanging on with his limbs….
In the end there were only two healthy guinea pigs – a lot of the illegitimate children died of very unnatural causes. A few survived and looked not dissimilar to Watership Down’s General Wormwart, though with less of an agenda. The sad thing is that I could never really hold them; they started bleeding when you touched them and squealed in pain.
Despite this they all out-lived any regular guinea pig. The hutches were moved to opposite ends of the garden to help prevent sex induced escapes and, like all pets, it was Mother Wells who had to look after them once the novelty wore off.
There’s not really a moral here; it isn’t a moral tale. Well, perhaps if you take anything away from this it’s that if you’re having an incestuous relationship and aren’t using contraception then don’t be surprised if the kid has a skin condition. I’ve heard prescription shampoos are expensive, so maybe factor that in to maintenance bills.
Photo by Michael James.
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