A Merry Prairie Christmas to All

Hello everyone, Heathcliffe, spokespig for the Prairie Pigs, here to wish all the piggies and piggy people out there our very best in Season's Greetings.  We hope you are having a peaceful and safe holiday.

Like many households this year, Christmas was a bit different for us, but while Slave seemed a little sad to be spending less time with family and friends during the Yuletide, we were mostly only pretending to be sympathetic while we enjoyed having her at our beck and call a lot more than past Christmases.  She did meet with a few friends now and then for walks around the neighbourhood to admire the festive light displays, but then she would be back all rosy-cheeked and more than ready to snuggle with us again.

We hope you are all finding creative ways to make this year's Christmas special, even if it is not exactly the one we would have chosen, and to count the blessings we still have (especially the small round furry ones)!

P.S. If you look closely at the lovely card next to me in the photo, you will see it's a Christmas pyramid of guinea pigs --- it came all the way from England from our Auntie Penny and the Piggyfriends.

 

Happy Christmas from the Piggyfriends.

 On behalf of the Piggyfriends, Orla would like to send Christmas wishes to all of our readers.

"Whatever is this green stuff?" she asks." It looks like grass but I do not think that it is edible."

Orla invites you to play "Spot the Pig".

 

" I don't know," says Orla. " My first Christmas and they get me to dress up! I did get to eat the carrot afterwards though."

We hope that everyone has the best Christmas possible in the current pandemic and hope that next year will be better for all the humans. Take care everyone and stay safe.

Smiles

 Hi all,

My boyfriend and pig dad Erwin made this video and it made me smile looking at the impatient piggies. I hope it makes you smile as well!

Mieke, proud slave to the piggies who learned this trick to show their impatience: Binky, Cookie and Linn

More New Piggyfriends! Two little boys.

When our Slave went to Pooh Piglets to collect Orla and Caoimhe, Pauline had many other piggies in need of loving homes. She had taken an extra carrier just in case so we knew that some more new friends would be accompanying our new girls on the way home. She could not take a carrier and not fill it up.

Two little brothers had been left at Pooh Piglets a few days previously and they were taken out of their hutch to meet Slave and her son.

Once picked up, they could not possibly be left behind so Sean was sent out for the other carrier and here they are at Piggyfriends.

Pauline said that she could only have them if she promised to change their names as she did not like them and this has been done. Slave has named them Oisin and Fionn ( say Osheen and Finn ) after two mighty warriors of Irish legend. We think that they will have to grow into their names as they are not very brave yet!

Here is another photo of Oisin, who does not actually have red eyes. Slave really needs to learn how to use the red eye filter on her camera.

And one showing his nice, fat "go faster" stripe around his middle.

Here is another pigture of Fionn.

He is all black except for a little white spot on his nose, which shows in the first pigture. They both love their food except for celery, which they may never have met before and are getting braver by the day especially as their pen is next door to that of Orla and Caoimhe and they come out to chat.

Please welcome them into the Piggyfriend clan.

Oh and we could not go without showing you this out take. Slave was trying to get a photo of Oisin's stripe. He was sitting nicely until he heard the click of the shutter and he was away.

A Piggy A to Z - "M" is for Meabh, A Brand-New Prairie Pig

 

 Hello, everyone!  My name is Meabh, and I am the newest Prairie Pig.  As you can see, I am a beautiful chestnut-brown Abyssinian with lots of whorls and rosettes, and I'm about five months old.  Meabh is a traditional Irish name (pronounced similar to Maeve or Mayve), and Slave gave me that name because the day I went up for adoption at the local animal shelter was the birthday of Penny, Slave to the Piggyfriends, who (as you likely know) is proudly Irish !

Though my official residence (which I like to call the Fortress of Solitude) is in the room next door to the Piggy Room, I get lots of floor time in the Piggy Room so I can socialize and hang out with the other Prairie Pigs.  Here I am visiting Heathcliffe.  Gosh --- is he a really big guy, or am I smaller than I think?

Here I am in one of my favourite hiding spots, the hay rack between Bonnie's and Pavarotti's cages; that's Pavarotti off to my left, looking a little concerned that I might have squeezed into this spot one time too many.  I like to keep Slave on her toes by shoe-horning myself into all sorts of places where it doesn't seem a guinea pig should be able to fit.  (To tell the truth, I fit into this particular hiding place a lot better a month ago when I first arrived.  Four weeks of munching my way through the endless Prairie Pig buffet might have left me just a teeny bit wider than I was when I got here...) 

Hmmmm --- it looks as if some careless person has left the door to the piggy room open, and I think there are one or two rooms on this floor that I haven't explored yet.  Slave says I am "a handful", whatever that means!  Apparently the other Prairie Pigs have always been quite content to stay in the Piggy Room whether the door is open or not, but I am a free spirit and much more adventurous than the average guinea pig.  

We have already discovered that a small piggy sitting directly under the middle of a bed is almost impossible to reach from any side and can stay there until she is good and ready to come out, regardless of Slave's plans to get to bed early and read a book.  (Though I do notice that she seems to be spending more time vacuuming under the beds since my excursions began, so perhaps she is learning some valuable lessons from the experience!)

New Piggyfriends! Please welcome them into their new home.

 In England, we have been in various lockdowns and restrictions for months on end. Slave thought that our nearest dedicated guinea pig rescue must have had to be closed but, during the summer, after the first lockdown, people were allowed to have six people in their gardens so the lovely lady that runs Pooh Piglets had prospective adopters sitting around her lawn and she would hold up a piggy needing a home rather like a piggy auction. Many lucky piggies were taken home and without this, it might not have been possible to keep the rescue going.

Now it is too cold to do this but Slave and her son were allowed to peek in the piggy shed door whilst Pauline help up a piggy for them to see. Slave knew that she had two Rex ladies so she asked to see them.

First of all she was shown this lovely lady.

Slave thought that she was the image of our Daisy from years ago. Long time GPDD readers might remember her as President of the LAPS. The Large and Ample Piggy Society.

She came into the rescue pregnant and her babes have all been adopted out so Pauline put another little Rex lady in with her for company. They are the best of friends.

She is pure white and does not have red eyes. That is just Slave being rubbish with her camera. Sean was sent back to the car for our carrier and they were both put in it with a pile of veggies to eat on the journey home.

All the food had gone by the time they got here and they were shown to their new home. Neither of these little ladies had names so Slave called the white one Orla. Here she is below.

 

And again so that you can see her dear little piggy nose.

Slave decided to call the grey girl Caoimhe. She does not expect anyone to know how to pronounce Irish names with the exception of the Surrey Squeakers' family and Pat of the Prairie Piggies, who is learning. You say it Keeva. Here she is again with Orla exiting stage right.

 

And both girls together.

They have settled in really well and eat everything in sight. Typical Rexes. We wonder if they will grow as big as Daisy and her brother Roscoe? They came here as tiny babes so had good food right from the start.

Of course, there were many more piggies wanting homes at Pooh Piglets and Orla and Caoimhe did not come home alone but that is a story for another day.

Footnote....Pooh Piglets has been involved in a rescue of hundreds of piggies from a breeder in Chichester who died. Many of them are pregnant. Many in a sorry condition, poor little poppets. When they are all recovered and the mums have weaned their babes, there will be countless piggies needing loving homes so if any of our readers live in the SE of England please think of them in the future if you have room for some more little friends.

Slave's Birthday Presents

It was Slave's birthday at the end of October. It must be easy for humans to find presents for a piggy lover and here are some of them.

This is a scarf that is absolutely covered with piggies!

Difficult to take a close up! The design is called "Lettuce be friends". Now she wants lockdown to be over so that our pigsitter can take her out for a much belated birthday dinner and she will be able to wear it.

This mug is called "The Anatomy of a Guinea Pig". We do not think that you will be able to read the captions but our favourite says " Squeaky Squeal Region ". The ears are labelled " Baby Cabbages" and the eyes are entitled " All-seeing vision beans."

Isn't this the sweetest little piggy? He is made of glass and you can tell how tiny he is from the next photo.

Yes readers. That is an apple behind him for comparison.