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.
After getting a cue from Binky chewing the willow twig tunnel... Cookie has gotten into an ardent attempt to eat the tunnel and she does it very vigorously! (Turn sound on!)
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."
This is Raani!
A few wheeks ago my slaves Mieke and daddy E went to see Dr. Pol at a dutch theatre.
You might know him as the incredible Dr. Pol and seen him while your slaves watch him on National geographic. What you might not know is that he was born in the Netherlands. So from his vet practice in Michigan, he came back to his home land and did a theatre tour.
Slaves say it was fun to watch him talk about all the animals he's seen and the things he experienced.
He did the show in Dutch as this is his mother tongue, which was odd, as slaves are used to seeing him speak English, but his dutch is still very good. Also his wife Diane manages to express herself very well in Dutch.
The first part of the show he would talk about his experiences and show videos of patients he's seen.
After the break everyone were told they would get to work and dr.Pol would 'see' some animals. All visitors to the show were asked to send in a picture of their pet with a question about them. Mommy thought this would be nice, and shared a pigture of me, and some x rays, and wanted to ask dr. Pol about my saddle back (a sagged back). It seems to be a rare thing in guinea pigs, we had never heard of that before it was found in me... It would be cool if my story was picked out of the entries!
So the break was over and consultation hour started...
And it was me on the screen! On the left you can see a miniature Dr. Pol and the hostess.
Mom was handed a microphone and told who I was and asked my question. It seemed he had not really heard about this saddleback in guinea pigs. He does know about it in horses, and asked if Raani had kids. Apparently this happens in animals that had kids, but Raani hasn't. He also said she is not a race horse and she can grow old with this and it should not bother her.
According to my vet it would cause (some) pain, so I am not sure now. Anyone here has any experience with guinea pigs and a saddle back?
Below you can see the video daddy E made of mom and Dr. Pol answering the question in dutch. If you want us to translate a bit, let us know! They are all laughing about dr.Pol saying she is not a race horse. At the end he says I am a pretty animal (mooi beestje) 😄.
Mummy and Daddy had a short break away from us recently, luckily they got to see some Capybara's with their babies so they didn't actually miss us too much. We made the most of them being away and had parties everyday shhhhhhh
Mummy saw this fun display at a local garden centre, while we think it looks great we also think they could have made this out of edible plants and flowers and then we could have sat at the table and eaten them.
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.
Whenever Mummy and Daddy see a field like this they always think this is what Guinea Pig heaven must be like.
We don't have the heart to them that we think the bales are actually straw and that guinea pigs don't like that as it is sharp and can scratch our eyes.
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.
Our friends around the world who follow this blog will know that a few weeks back the UK was hit by a heatwave and while this was fun at first it soon began to drag on even sun worshipping humans were get fed up at the lack of the rain.
For us guinea pigs it was horrible as this is what became of our lovely Green Garden.
Luckily after what felt like forever the rain finally returned and now our Garden is Green and Great once again.
We have also decided that the so called human Tom Jones is really a guinea pig. Why do we think this? Why would a human be singing about the Green Green Grass of home??? Think about it do your humans sing about missing Grass?
Mom is saying we are very curious. Yesterday she gave us a piece of home grown cherry tomato, that was very good. So we were trying to get her to give us some more.... That resulted in these pigtures of us, and not more tomatoes so far.
How about you, do you have curious piggy pigtures like ours? We would love to see them to convince mom this is perfectly normal behavior!
We were very sorry to discover that our lovely Rodentologist at Palace Piggies Rescue is moving to Yorkshire, which is a long, long way away from Piggyfriends. All of the piggies for adoption need to find homes quickly so that the Palace Piggies people do not have too many piggies to move along with them.
.....you will see that the top two piggies, Machu Picchu and Kiwi, are reserved. That is because they are coming to live with us! Slave cannot pick them up until next Tuesday so watch this space for more news.
P.S. If any Slaves in South East England have room for a piggy or two, Palace Piggies would love to hear from you. They always have more piggies than they have room to show on their adoption page. Contact details on their website.
After that one wet day, the heatwave returned and it goes on and on although the weatherman has just said that we might be getting some rain in a few days time. We cannot go outside as it is so hot but we thought that it was about time we made a post and decided to move on to G in our alphabet.
What else could we possibly start with other than the most important G of all - GUINEA PIGS of course.
It being too hot to do anything that required exercise, we had a look through the Piggyfriend archives and found these photos, which were for a little friendly competition about who could make the longest line of piggies.
Our senior piggy Otto, on the right, remembers this photoshoot from his younger days. He says that Slave made a line of celery both to keep all the piggies in order and also to stop them from falling off the sofa whilst she took the photos.
Then she took the celery away and, very quickly, took this photo. Otto says that he was replaced by Fennel for this pigture.
This was the longest line of piggies that Slave was able to make as they filled up the sofa.
Otto remembers that were a lot of outtakes during this photoshoot. Here is one....
Not all of the piggies would stay in line.....
Anyone reading this will know all about Guinea Pigs so we do not need to tell you any more but we would love to see any photos that you might have. Use the Contribute button at the top of our page.
The above pigture shows some of the Piggyfriends waiting to be lined up. As you can see, we come in many different shapes, sizes, hairstyles and colours.
Now we are waiting in earnest for that rain to come so that we can show you some photos of G for Grass.
"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.
The dreadful heatwave continues here at Piggyfriends. We cannot go outside to forage as there is nothing there to eat and even the humans have been advised to stay out of the sun between 11 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. Not that our Slave needs any such advice.
She did come home with this box of pseudo grass yesterday. It looked quite like grass so we were willing to give it a try.
Unfortunately it was very coarse and the dandelions were not up to our normal juicy standard but, in the circumstances, we were willing to forgive our Slave, who had made the effort to find us something that was nearly grass.
Cosmo Piggyfriend thinks that this is more like a doormat than grass but he is giving it his best shot ."This is better than no grass at all", he says between mouthfuls, "but it takes a lot of chewing."
Carter, Aoife and Saoirse will have a go at anything that looks like grass and every Piggyfriend tried some although it was not quite so relished as the usual lush supply.
There has never been a day when no grass has been served at Piggyfriends, even when Slave has to brush off the snow to find it so we have been very disappointed in the weather that has ruined our favourite food.
We have all been moved into Slave's dining room, which is the coolest room in the house and we have lots of fans to keep away the worst of the heat. Some of us are in smaller pens than usual to fit us all in but who wants to run around when it is hot? We wish that it would rain!
We just wanted to share what our grass looks like... It's been rather warm outside, inside has been okay so far, and it hasn't rained for quite a time... Dull brownish 'grass' is all we see what looking out the window.
Wheekz, Guinygirlz Raani and Cookie and boar Binky
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.
Hey Mum said Squirly! Did I hear you say that there are piggys that do
not have any grass to eat? Yes some piggys live where there are heat
waves and droughts. Their slaves can not collect grass for them. Well
Honeydew and I are going to pray for all of our Piggyfriends around the
world. May Mother Nature Bless them with grass.
