New Agent Peter Parker Joins Undercover Guinea Pigs

Hi there, I'm Heathcliffe, the newest Prairie Pig.  I was just a little porker when I arrived here, but I've grown a lot and am now big enough to apply for "Agent Status"!   Up until now, none of the Prairie Pigs has ever become an Agent, so I'm hoping that being the first Agent here will give me the inside track to become Number One Boyfriend to the beautiful Bonnie McSmithers.  (Bonnie is the only girl Prairie Pig, so as you might imagine, there is quite a bit of competition among the five of us boys to get her attention!)

I would like my Agent Name to be Peter Parker (alter ego of Spiderman, of course).  I do have some history there, since it was my name at the Humane Society shelter before Slave picked me to come home with her and become a Prairie Pig.  This is my portrait from the shelter website:

I even have a super power, which is cage rattling!  I'm very good at it and practice all the time.  (Slave begs me to stop, because she says she has already spent too much money on piggy dental work, but I ignore her --- slaves don't understand about Agent stuff!)  To tell the truth, I'm not sure how cage rattling would help me in my work as an Agent, but you never know, do you?

Well, it's been almost half an hour since my last snack, so I think I'd better go and eat something   now;  I don't want to take a chance on falling below Agent weight with my first big assignment coming up soon...

Are there any other aspiring Agents out there?  Apply here!  It would be extra fun if there were a few of us rookies who could take training and practice our Agent moves together.

Annual Candle Lighting Ceremony

Casper Piggyfriend is ready to light his candle in memory of a vast number of Piggyfriends past as well as Slave's beloved doggies, many birds and fish. Slave remembers Peter Gurney, whom she was lucky enough to meet at a book signing, where he signed her copy of Piggy Potions.

"Will you help me with the match please Slave? I do not want to burn my whiskers."

"Stand back," says Slave. " I am ready to light our candle. It is not easy to hold the camera at the same time!"

"There we are," says Slave. "We will keep our candle burning so that our light passes around the world in memory of so many friends, both human and animals, who are no longer with us but are watching us from the Rainbow Bridge."

The Piggyfriends ask that, if you lit a candle, could you send us a photo so that we can share it with our readers. GPDD readers have a link to send their details for publishing on the Digest and somewhere to send their photos too.

It is not a very good photo but.....

....little Kiwi always runs off as soon as he sees the camera but Slave managed to sneak up on him and this is the result.

His mind was on the grass that he was sharing with his brother Picchu and seconds later he was off and away but at least you can see him. Slave wishes that he would sit still for a photoshoot as she loves an agouti but he is still very nervous. He will take a veggie from Slave's hand now so one day he might actually pose with the rest of us then, when we get round to K in our Piggy A-Z, you will be able to see some better pigtures.

Our Friend Avalanche

Readers of the GPDD will know Avalanche, who arranges wonderful virtual Hallowe'en parties for them with the help of his mom, Carol.

He has sent us a photo so that you can see what a handsome fellow he is.

Staying warm in winter

Hello, this is Stuart Little, and I am a little shy because I have never
posted on a blog. I am the one who looks like a snowman, or, well,
snowpig. My mom says I am luminous, but I am not sure what that means.
While I try to learn new words, I love to sit next to my brother,
Nugget. Even when he is in a cozy, I try to be close. Although our eyes
are open, I think we are sleeping in this pigture.

Gingerbread Piggy

Every Christmas our Slave makes gingerbread piggies with her biscuit cutter. We showed you some of them last Christmas.

This year she drew round her bigger cutter and cut out some ginger felt. She made these.....

.....to hang on our tree.

Made a change from Gingerbread Men.

Slave's Christmas Presents

It is easy for anyone to choose a present for a Guinea Pig Slave. Here are our Slave's presents.

This mug came from our erstwhile Junior Slave, who now lives in the US.

These two were from Slave's eldest, who is also our pigsitter. The top pigture is of a Christmas Tree Bauble, with a piggy on it. How cool is that? It has been hanging on our Christmas Tree but we suspect that it will not be packed away with the rest of the decorations but will sit on the shelf where Slave keeps her collection of piggy mugs. We love the T-shirt.

Did your Slaves get any piggy presents this Christmas? Do write and tell us about them. Pat, Slave to the Prairie Piggies was given a mug with the same pattern on it as the cross stitch pigture that our Slave had for her birthday.

Happy New Year Everyone!

It is midnight here in England and, although we know that New Year arrives at different times around the globe, all the Piggyfriends would like to wish all our readers a very Happy New Year 2019.

It looks as though Algernon Rat has already raised a few glasses of carrot wine.

Happy Holidays!

Nugget here. Our mom is a little late, but she and our dad took our
photo on Christmas Day. This is Stuart Little's first holiday photo (he
is the one who looks like a snowman), and he was very excited. (OK, he
was mostly wondering what was going on.) But we posed very politely. The
book was a present for us, and the box holds some candy for Mom and Dad,
and we are not allowed to eat that. We had plenty of goodies, though! We
hope everyone is enjoying the holidays.

Happy Christmas to all of our Readers.

Happy Holidays Everyone. Here are few photos of the Piggyfriends celebrating. Magnus, Ivan and Mimi were our victims ( sorry subjects ) and they were handsomely rewarded with veggies afterwards.

Have a great time everyone with lots of nibbles.

We have a Christmas Card

We had our very own Christmas card in the mail this morning.

It is from the Surrey Squeakers, whose blog we follow and that is a pigture of Meg Squeaker on the front. Please do not peg it up on Machu Picchu and Kiwi's pen or they might eat it like they did their name card. Let us put it where we can all see it.

Thank you very much Surrey Squeakers!

Can we make our own Christmas cards? Please, Slave, please? "We will have to see about that sweeties. It is too late for this year but maybe next Christmas. We need to find out how it is done and one of you is going to have to sit very still for the photo. No running off and hiding under the table."

Look what we did!

Slave makes name cards for all of our pens. Ours fell into our pen so we ate it.....

.....and she had to make us a new one.

Winter is coming.

After a very mild autumn in England it is getting colder today. Slave's friend Pat emailed her to say that they have 7 inches of snow in Canada where she lives and her poor piggies cannot have fresh grass. So, in case that happens here, Magnus and Ivan have abandoned their houses and bagged themselves a place next to a radiator.

Piggy Presents!

We were away visiting our friend, Avalanche, who threw a Hallowe'en Party when it was Slave's birthday but here are some photos of her presents. It is always easy to find a present for a piggy person.

This little orange and white piggy was a gift from our pigsitter, her eldest son. He is sitting on some flowery fleece and has not made a mess with some beetroot.

Isn't he sweet? Slave does needlepoint so he also gave her a kit to make a pigture of two piggies.

She says that she cannot start it yet as she has a half finished picture on her frame at the moment but as soon as that one is finished, she will start making the piggy pigture.

A package arrived in the mail and guess what was inside. Another little piggy, twin to the first one......

....except that this little piggy is a tricolour. This one came from our one time Junior Slave, who lives in the US now. They did not know what each other had bought as a gift and they chose almost identical piggies. What a coincidence!

Here they are together.

We will have to nag Slave to make the pigture so that we can show the finished article to you. Slave says that they take a long time as she just does little bits when she has spare time and, with all of us to care for, she does not have much of that.

Happy Hallowe'en Everyone.

All of the Piggyfriends would like to wish you a very Happy Hallowe'en. We are off to a party courtesy of our friend Avalanche but we posed for some photos before we left.

Niamh will always sit nicely for a photo. Here she is.

" Do you think that I might get some of that apple?" she asks. " Of course you will sweetie," replies Slave.

Slave did not expect Mimi to stay still but she obliged with the following photos.

Then it was the turn of our new boys, Kiwi and Machu Picchu. Kiwi is rather nervous and declined to take part but his brother decided that this looked interesting and investigated the scenery.

No. Don't eat the leaves, Picchu!

No, you cannot eat the pumpkin either. It is just a toy one.

But you can have some of that apple. Slave will cut the apples up and share them around in a minute.

Happy Hallowe'en readers!

Our Pigsitter took some photos.

Our Slave has been away on holiday so her son came to house and pigsit. He took some photos on his phone so they are not as good as those from Slave's camera.

"Look!" says Kiwi," Our newspaper says that we are messy!" " That is odd. I thought that he had just cleaned out our pen." replies Machu Picchu in between mouthfuls of fresh grass.

" Don't worry." calls Fernando from next door. " That is not an indictment of the state of your pen. You have been given the sports pages and the article is about Lionel Messi, who is a famous footballer. The pigsitter has brought us some really good grass today."

Curious Piggy.

Our Slave tried to take some photos of us being Curious Piggies like Mieke's. Unfortunately her camera makes a little "Click" before, a second later, off goes the flash. This Click is enough for us to hear it and run away resulting in lots of out-takes.

Here is one of Cosmo Dangermouse.

Then she tried bribery but this is not quite the photo that she was seeking although Cosmo did get an extra piece of cucumber.

Finally success ( of a kind ). It is lucky that Cosmo is white as the photo is a bit dark, for which she apologises. You can also see that he ate that piece of cucumber as his coat looks rather green under his chin.

Machu Picchu and Kiwi come home

We have two new friends here at Piggyfriends. They are going to introduce themselves.

"Hello readers! I am called Machu Picchu. The nice lady at Palace Piggies Rescue said that my previous owner named me after somewhere she had visited. My new Slave has always wanted to go there too so she is keeping my name. I came here with my brother, Kiwi."

"Hello. I am Kiwi. I got my name because our previous owner thought that my colour is like that of a kiwi bird. I have never seen one so I do not know. Slave says that I am an agouti pig. Machu Picchu is much braver than me and lets our new Slave pick him up without any fuss but I am rather nervous although I will allow her to stroke me. I do like sitting in this box of hay, from where I can see what is going on."

"There is some delicious grass here," says Machu Picchu in between mouthfuls, " but the other piggies here tell us that there was a grass shortage recently due to a heatwave. How terrible. I am glad that the grass is growing again."

" If I reach out far enough," says Kiwi," I can just eat that grass."

"Don't be scared," says Machu Picchu, "It is very safe here. Our neighbours are eating grass too and just look at the size of them. If we eat up all of our food do you think that we could grow that big?"

Fernando and Martin are in the next door pen to our new friends and they are enjoying the grass too.

Rain!!

"What is that noise on the roof?" asks Niamh Piggyfriend.

" Hey, look guys! It is raining! Does this mean that our grass will grow again?"

" Yes," replies Slave," but it will take a few days before I am able to pick any for you."

The Piggyfriends are relieved that they will soon be able to enjoy their daily ration of grass and will put up with veggies in the meantime. They are also delighted that it is not so hot today.

A message from our newest Pigpenpal, Noodle.

Hello Piggyfriends,

My new Slave has taken some more photos and I thought that you would like to see them. First of all, here is another one of me. When I was taken to the shelter, my nails were about an inch long and my new Slave immediately trimmed them so I am able to run around properly and have fun.

Can you see my nice neat nails?

Here I am at home, being weighed.

I am going to get fat with all this good food.

Our Slave grows veggies in the garden and we all got to share the first of the carrot crop.

We all ate the leaves first and then we finished off the carrots.

It was all very yummy and we cannot wait for more carrots to be ready to pick.

Love and oinks from your PigPenPal, Noodle.