Kangaroo & Didgeridoo

Guinea pigs as a breed are generally interested in names and the origin of words.  I think this must come from being so utterly mis-named ourselves.  We do not come from Guinea, we certainly cost more than a guinea and even the most Tasmanian amongst us can see that we are not pigs.  We're far better looking - I know I am at least.  So while Pea and Chook weren't looking I took a sneak peak at Wikipedia and that was no help at all.  Messrs Wikki & Pedia had no idea where the name came from. They did however say that guinea pigs were used to diagnose certain ailments such as jaundice and typhus.  This was done by rubbing the animal over the sufferer although it's not clear how one assessed a positive or negative diagnosis.  Apparently black guinea pigs were particularly sought after in this regard.  The animal was then killed and it's entrails sifted through in order to assess the success of whatever treatment was prescribed.  My mate Badger is a very black little cavy so he'd better watch out because Pea will be rubbing him up and down his body next time he thinks he has a cold coming on.  Yuck!  What a thought.

Legend has it that the kangaroo got it's name as follows.  When Captain Cook first rowed ashore in Australia he was met by an aboriginal with a dead kangaroo over his shoulder and a didgeridoo in his hand.  Captain Cook is reputed to have said.  "I say my good man. What is that creature you have slung over your shoulder?"  Actually, since Captain Cook was a Yorkshireman it was probably more likely to have been. "Hey up lad! Ee by 'eck and eckythump.  In t'name o' Geoffrey Boycott and Yorkshire bitter, what the 'eck's that on tha shoulder?"  Understandably the aboriginal gentleman replied in his own dialect "Kangaroo." Which translated means "I can't understand a word you're saying mate."  Captain Cook then nodded sagely and pointed to the didgeridoo.  "Cheers pal," he said. "And what's wi' wooden downpipe tha's got in t'other hand like?" To which the aboriginal chap said "Didgeridoo", which translates to "Piss off back to England ya pommy bastard." A nice story I know, but unlikely to be true if only due to the fact that didgeridoos originated in the northern territory and were unlikely to have been known to the Aboriginal tribes of eighteenth century southern Australia.

Pea's full name is Peter.  This is a biblical name meaning stone or rock.  It's an apt name for Pea since his head seems to be full of them.  Chook is a funny one.  Her name Jacquelin means in Hebrew "The Supplanter."  Who did she supplant?  Who was in Pea's heart when Chook wormed her way in there and supplanted them.  I'll have to interrogate Pea further on this issue and I'll keep you informed.  Meanwhile I have to admit that Badger has wormed his way into my little piggy heart.  I just can't keep my paws off him, even though I know it means that my testostricles are hanging by a thread - so to speak.  Trouble is he's such a tease.  He just sits there all innocent, with his big brown eyes, little white nose and a little lost pig expression on his face. My legs turn to jelly and then I just have to mount him, I can't help myself and I always get caught.  Not Badger though, he makes sure no one's looking and I'm bending over my dish having tea before he pounces.  It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.  Of course one meaning of the word badger is "to harass or pester persistently" which strangely enough is what we do to each other.    

Hide the Sausage

I think I know why our glorious Australian cricket captain - Ricky Ponting has been so ratty and petulant lately.  I read that he has dozens of bats - well no wonder then.  All that squeaking and fluttering of leathery wings must be driving him nuts, and imagine the amount of bush chocolate he'd have to clean up.  He probably gets fewer hours sleep than he gets runs these days.  My advice?  Dump the bats Ricky.  Get yourself a guinea pig.  We're quiet-ish, we don't flap our wings in the middle of the night and we don't carry hendra virus.  Sure we crap on the floor sometimes, but hey, doesn't everyone? Anyway our droppings are nice neat little parcels of goodness - yum!  I love em!  They're easy to pick up and have a nice aerodynamic shape should you ever feel the need to chuck 'em at your partner.

Talking of leaders who have passed their use by date, I see that Libya's Colonel Gaddafi is blaming Osama bin Laden for the uprising that looks like it will either oust or kill him.  I can think of numerous other calamitous events to blame on bin Laden.  Australia's defeat in the Ashes, the Queensland floods, my being mounted by my mate Badger, West Ham's poor form in the English Premier League to name just a few.  What a funny little man Gaddafi is.  First he blames it all on drug addicts, now it's bin Laden.  What next? Indigestion?  Oh well, he'll either be living in a palace in Saudi or six feet under the sand of the Western Desert soon - inshallah.

My friend Badger is a funny little bloke.  He has his own cage at the moment because Pea and Chook are convinced we're going to bonk each other to death.  He has a little blue shelter in his cage, not unlike my little red one.  I know he's in there somewhere but I hardly ever see him.  Chook puts his food in his bowl and half an hour later it's gone.........and yet he hasn't left his shelter.  How does he do that?  He must be able to suck more powerfully than a black hole.  I reckon he just sits in his little blue shelter and sucks like crazy, so that the food shoots straight out of the bowl into his mouth.  There's no way I'm going to try that.  With my luck I'd end up with a bean stuck up my nose and have to go to the vet to have it surgically removed - how embarrassing.

Anyway now my lust for Badger has subsided a little Pea and Chook let us play together in the play pen for a while each evening.  I love sidling up by his side and barging him with my backside.  Because he's less than half my size and about a quarter of my weight he goes sliding across the tiles, it's great entertainment but I have to be careful not to barge him in the direction of my food bowl because he then just sits there and inhales the lot and it's no good me running to Pea or Chook for sympathy, the just say "Serves you right."  Fine. please yourselves, I say, I'll just give you some extra bush chocolate to clear up. Then last night Pea let me lick his toes.  If it's good enough for the Duchess of York, it's good enough for him he reckons.  So there I was slurping away when I got distracted by a phone ringing on the telly.  I hate that noise so I leapt in the air and spun round to glare at the offending contraption.  Then I felt something hard pressing against my backside.  Well, naturally my immediate thought was that Badger had crept up behind me for a quick game of hide the sausage.  I wasn't having that so I ran back to my little red shelter and pressed my bum hard against the rear wall, only to find Pea and Chook laughing at me because Pea had poked my bottom with his toe.  The very toe that I'm going to take a chunk from next chance I get. 

Oops I Did It Again

To quote the wise and immortal words of Britney Spears, (Or was it Tony Abbott?) "Oops I did it again."  I couldn't help myself.  One minute I was in the play-pen sniffing Badger's bottom, the next I was on top of him.  It's all a bit of a blur really and I don't have much recollection of the event other than Pea's great paw descending on me and dragging me off.  Actually I think Pea was quite proud of me and probably envied my stamina.  Chook says I'm quite a stud and Pea reckons I could make a fortune in piggy-porn movies.   But then to add insult to injury, while I was distracted and chewing a bit of carrot the little sod mounted me.  (Badger that is, not Pea.)  Well you can imagine my surprise and I spent the rest of the evening with my back to the wall with one eye on my carrot and the other on Badger.  Anyway, that incident has rather cooled my ardour.  I thought he was such a nice, young, innocent little pig.  Oh! But love is blind.  I see him now for what he is - a raving sexual predator and I can assure you that next time I drop my bean I'm going to kick it all the way back to my little red shelter before I bend down to pick it up.

The other day I created a Twitter account for myself, so you can now all follow my witty comments and cutting remarks there too, where I go under the pseudonym Piggusbiggus.  I have the honour of being followed by our former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.  I am one of an elite group of almost 250,000 to be followed by Kevin07.  He even follows Pea, aka "Theafricadude".  It must take him all day to read everyone's tweets.  Mostly they are a waste of space anyway.  People say the dumbest things and expect others to be interested.  Things like - "I'm in the shopping centre looking for a toilet.  I hope I can find a clean one." and  "I'm sitting in the departure lounge and it's very hot and stuffy."  Well guess what.  Nobody cares, so shut up!  I follow Kristina Keneally, the Premier of New South Wales.  She doesn't say much but Pea reckons she's the sexiest politician he's ever seen.  Even sexier than Bronwyn Bishop, as if that were possible.  I also follow several guinea pigs.  I just hope that the cyber police don't arrest me for attempting to groom them for my own devious sexual ends.

Finally today I'd like to comment on the predicament of poor old Colonel Gaddafi.  Forty-odd years in power,  (Some of them very odd.) and now it looks as though he's going the same way as Mr Mubarak.  There are a lot of weird contradictions in the West's relationship with Gaddafi.  Even a randy little cavy can see that.  You Western humans spent most of the last forty years denigrating the old loony while at the same time sucking up to him for his oil.  If I was him I'd now say "Stuff it."  I'd withdraw my squillions from my Swiss bank account and move in with some other despot.  I'm sure the Saudi's will welcome him like they did Idi Amin and there's no way you Western humans will kick up a fuss because you need their oil too.  Sometimes I'm glad I'm just a simple, non-cynical guinea pig. 

Billy the Badger Bonker

Well, I now have a little friend.  He's a black and white short-haired little bloke called Badger.  I guess he's less than half my size which may be why his eyes bulged a bit when I tried to give him a nice welcoming bonk.  Pea and Chook had put us in our play pen and Pea then climbed in to supervise us.  I don't know what he thought I was going to do to Badger, eat him maybe.  All I did was greet him nose to nose and then went around the back and mounted him.  What's wrong with that?  I'm sure humans do it all the time when they first meet.  Anyway, I never had Pea down as being homophobic but every time I climbed on Badger's back he pulled me off and castigated me as though I had sinned against God and all that is righteous.  It probably didn't help when I eventually ejaculated on his hand.  Good grief I was only trying to be friendly.

In hindsight that might have been a slight error of judgement on my part, although hardly surprising.  After all I've been celibate for the seven months or so that I've lived with Pea and Chook. What did he expect?  So once again I fear that the vet's scalpel is hanging disturbingly over my testostricles. Hardly fair is it?  From what Pea and Chook are saying I'll have another chance to redeem myself.  They are going to put Badger and I together again later today to see if I can control my baser urges.  It'll be difficult, after all he is a very attractive little cavy, so smooth, soft and sleek.  It's hard to believe that he's a bloke, and that's the problem.  If Badger was ugly, scruffy and smelly (Like Pea come to think of it.) I wouldn't be nearly as smitten, but one look at that cute little black and white snout, his little pink nose and gorgeous brown eyes and I'm done for.  So somehow when the time comes I'll have to control myself, shake his paw, say "How do you do?  Allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Billy.  So sorry about that little incident yesterday old chap, I wasn't really feeling myself."  Either that or I could just leap on his back and bonk away like last time.  Trouble is if I do that I just know that I can kiss my goolies goodbye - so to speak.

Anyway, enough of my problems.  While I was searching the bottom of my cage for a piece of newspaper to mop up some of the wee I've been producing lately to mark my territory I read that humans are become worried about the increasing frequency of shark attacks.  There are even calls to cull great white sharks.  Jeez you humans are dumb!  Of course there have been more shark sightings and attacks close to the shore.  You're eating all the bloody fish in the ocean - dragging out every last tiddler in your dirty great nets.  What are sharks supposed to do - go to Maccas and say "I'll have a fillet 'o' fish, a large fries and a chocolate shake please."  Here's a radical idea.  Cull the fishermen and leave the sharks alone.  It'll take a while but there'll be more fish in the sea and fewer sharks willing to chance their arms (Do sharks have arms?) attacking and chowing down on you dopey humans.    

Something Small & Furry

We've just had a visit from a lady who Pea and Chook introduced to me as my Auntie Jan.  This confused me no end as she didn't really look much like a guinea pig.  In fact she looked suspiciously human, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they where pulling my furry leg.  Anyway Auntie Jan seemed nice enough as humans go, but during the five days she stayed she displayed a rather unfortunate scientific interest in animals and animal behaviour.  This meant I had to participate as a guinea pig (appropriately enough) in various experiments that she deemed necessary to carry out in the name of science.

Don't worry.  She didn't have me smoking cigarettes.  Neither did she drip chemicals into my eyes the way some cosmetics manufacturing companies do to rabbits.  She didn't attach electrodes to my head to try to figure out what I'm thinking about. (Just as well because at that moment she wouldn't have been flattered.)  No, it was much worse than that.  She had suspicions that my eyesight is not very sharp so she held a piece of red capsicum (my very favourite treat) at varying distances from my nose to see at what point I finally realised what it was.  I fooled her into thinking that I couldn't see it when it was out of reach, so when she brought it so close that it was almost touching my nose, and she thought that I must be totally blind and in need of a white stick and a labrador, I struck like greased lightening and snatched the juicy red capsicum out of her hand before she could move it away again.  Next she tried to train me like a dog - how insulting.  While I was having my evening run around the floor she would try to make me come to her, which I steadfastly refused to do.  What's to stop her coming to me if she's so anxious to get closer to my adorable presence.  Then when I was on her lap she tried to get me to roll over on my back to have my tummy scratched.  Dogs might be dopey enough to do this and expose their naughty bits to all and sundry, but not this little furry pig.  In the end Auntie Jan just threw her hands in the air and declared that there was no way she could teach me anything.  I could have told her that to start with and saved her a lot of trouble - I already know it all.

Now there is a rumour flying around the Pea and Chook household that there is going to be an addition to the family.  I've heard them saying that I should have a playmate.  They've been checking out various guinea pig welfare websites and have discovered that it is a myth that male guinea pigs housed together will fight to the death especially if one of them is a piglet.  This means that I might soon be getting a baby brother.  I would have preferred a cavy chicky-babe but since Pea and Chook are concerned that their house would be overrun by piglets in a matter of weeks that doesn't seem likely to happen.  Anyway, at least it now seems that I won't be having all that is precious to me removed and there wouldn't be much point having a chicky-babe around if my manhood went missing would there?

So it looks as though the Pea and Chook house will once more echo to the sound of four tiny feet and I suppose it will fall to me to house train him and to tell him about the birds and the bees.........and the bats.  I certainly have first hand experience of the former thanks to the low flying, dive bombing Biggles the budgie.  Bees I'm not so sure about, and as for bats, my advice would be to avoid them and their awful screeching and wing flapping like the plague - bloody vampires.

Well, there you have it my friends.  As soon as something small and furry turns up in my cage you'll be the first to know.

  

Show Some Respect

Okay, I admit it, I'm an animal, a very cute, even adorable animal, but an animal nevertheless. If you're reading this so are you - an animal I mean, not cute and adorable.  If you are a human then that is very unlikely.  There are of course two other alternatives.  You could be a rock or a vegetable.  I know many humans have rocks in their heads and are vegetative though that seems unlikely in your case since you have the good sense and taste to be reading my blog.  I always have a little piggy giggle when humans say about other humans "Hah, they're nothing but a bunch of animals."  Talk about the pot called the kettle.............etc.  Why do you humans assume that you have a superior intelligence to the rest of the animal kingdom?  You have a different intelligence, I will grant you that.  You might be able to read, write, blow each other to mincemeat in your many wars and lose bucket loads of money on the stock market, but can you recognise someone by sniffing their poo?  Can you, for example, ambush an impala and drag it up a tree before the hyenas or lions get to it?  Can you fly without climbing into a metal tube with a couple of highly flammable, extremely noisy thrusting things strapped to it?  Can you navigate your way from the flood plains of northern Australia to the frozen tundra of Siberia by means of invisible magnetic fields?    No, I don't think you can, so you humans can stop acting so bloody superior right now.

And another thing while I'm on the subject.  What make's you humans think you have the right to put the rest of us to "sleep" whenever you feel like it?  A horse injures itself and can no longer work for the human.  Put it to sleep, it's no longer worth anything.  What a horrible attitude.  Would you do that to your granny when she goes a bit loopy?  You'd probably like to I know, but the stupid government won't let you.   It's the same thing. she's still an animal like the poor old horse who may be unable to work but can still have a happy, quiet life if his injury can be mended.  I've told Pea and Chook that if I should accidentally fall off their lap and dislocate my hip when I'm having my fur brushed, they're to take me immediately to the nearest vet (From what I've heard about Queensland doctors a vet is a better bet for humans too.) and get my injury seen to without having me "put down."  And what a strange term that is.  Put down where exactly?  Put down in the basement?  Put down the toilet?  What?  It all sounds very undignified anyway.

And don't get me started on recreational fishermen.  Uh oh too late - I've started.  Now that it has been proven that fish feel pain why is it thought acceptable to shove a barbed hook into a fishes mouth and then yank the line that it is attached to - for fun!  They're not even going to eat the animal, they're going to kiss it on it's injured head and lob it back where it came from.  What a pointless exercise.  Fine, if you intend to eat the fish by all means catch it, otherwise leave it alone.  Can you imagine people being allowed to do that to any other animal.

"Bye darling.  I'm just off with the lads for an afternoon of sticking great steel barbs into possums' mouths.  Can your order a pizza for us for when we get home?"  As an animal myself I have no objection to animals who eat other animals, even though I'm strictly vegetarian myself.  I fully understand that some of us are required to eat meat and fish to remain healthy.  Lions are carnivores, humans are omnivores and guinea pigs are herbivores, but at least kill what you're going to eat with minimum pain and maximum dignity.

Some Kalahari bushmen will weep and praise an animals spirit when they've hunted it down.  I don't expect humans to burst into tears every time they sit down in front of a T-bone steak, but at least have some respect for a fellow creature.

Snobs and Ferals

Just harking back for a moment to my last blog "Just Plain Weird", and the revelation that Malawi has made passing wind illegal.  I sincerely hope that these vicious, greenhouse gas emitting criminals are locked in a well ventilated secure wing well away from petty mass murderers and terrorists.  To make another inmate who was probably guilty of nothing more than beheading a child, setting fire to a cat and stealing an old ladies bible share a cell with such a hardened farting felon would surely amount to cruel and unusual punishment - for the child beheader I mean.

Meanwhile I'm just beginning to understand what dreadful snobs Pea and Chook are.  As I understand it, they moved to Cooroy from Coolum Beach nearly ten years ago to escape the "ferals" who had moved in there.  Now I'm not sure what they mean by "ferals".  I can only assume that Coolum is crawling with cane toads, rabbits, foxes, Indian mynahs and every other non-native animal you can think of.  (Guinea pigs excluded.  We're not feral, we're exotic.)  It's hard to imagine Pea and Chook objecting to having to share their home with any animal though so they must mean something else.  What I do know is that Pea reckons that being well dressed in Coolum means that you're wearing a new pair of thongs.  (That's flip-flops for you Poms, not skimpy knickers, although no doubt some will wear both.)  Being well groomed as well as well dressed means that you've also washed your feet sometime this month.

They like to tell the story of how not long after they'd moved to Cooroy they were sitting at a coffee shop in Cooroy's main street with Chook's Mum and Dad, explaining what a wonderful place Cooroy was and that you get a much better class of person there.  No doubt Pea and Chook had their little fingers cocked as they slurped their lattes.  It was Sunday lunch time and the pie shop across the road was just closing.  A man in a stained blue singlet riding up over a hairy beer gut which peeped provocatively out from under it strode into the shop, his greasy pigtail slapping against his back and his porky thighs wobbling under a pair of all too revealing, skin tight shorts.

A moment later he re-emerged, his face an angry shade of crimson.  Evidently he'd been told that as the shop was about to close he could not purchase a pie.
  "Well f#*k yiz then!" He yelled at the top of his voice.  "Yiz can shove yer f#*k'n shop up yer f#*k'n arse!"
He then grabbed a five or six year old girl (apparently his daughter, who was waiting outside) by the hand and said to her "F#*k 'em Koyley.  We'll go somewhere else."

Evidently Pea and Chook just looked at each other and simultaneously said "Must be from Coolum."

Just Plain Weird

Pea is desperately worried.  He's heard on the radio - and he only listens to the ABC, so it must be true - that  Justice Minister George Chaponda of Malawi has banned farting in public.  This may have serious consequences for Pea who travels to Africa frequently using his African Travel Specialist job title as an excuse.  He's concerned that if other African nations follow suit he will become a persona non-grata throughout the entire continent.  He reckons that one day he might peacefully going about his business in Botswana when he suddenly and accidentally lets rip and finds himself in the slammer on a charge of being in possession of an offensive bum.  Quite right too if you ask me.  He's been asking for trouble for years.  I'd love to know how they intend to police the law though.  Imagine half a dozen people in a lift including a police officer.  Someone slyly introduces a "silent but deadly".  Everyone is going to be pointing the finger at everyone else, and what if it was the copper himself?  No, it won't work I'm afraid.  It's a silly law.  It would be much better to ban the sale of baked beans, or at least have a three day cooling off period  when someone wants to buy a tin.  Another alternative would be to issue the whole population with corks, but that might bring a whole new meaning to the term "rampant inflation".

Meanwhile on the domestic front, my house-mates, Paolo and Biggles the budgies have been very active lately.  Unlike yours truly they don't seem to mind the heat.  In fact they obviously enjoy it.  When it's hot Paolo smooches up to his mirror and starts chirping sweet nothings at it and gently pecking at it as though he's trying to kiss the pretty blue bird therein.  On the other hand  Biggles - my little green friend sidles up to his mirror like a drunken Glaswegian and head butts it with all his might.  He then kicks it and whacks it with his wing while he holds it down with his beak.  He's a nasty bit of work sometimes.  Then he rushes around to the other side of the mirror only to find that there's another little green bastard there so he proceeds to knock seven shades of bush chocolate out of it too.  Then a suddenly as the violence began it's all over and he starts kissing the mirror very gently, just like Paolo as if he's trying to make up for half killing it.  Honestly these native Australian animals are just plain weird.

Pea has just slipped what is supposed to be a rabbit slash guinea pig treat into my cage which I take it I am supposed to eat. It's the size and weight of a house brick and would take me a year to get through it. Why the hell would I want to eat anything made of rabbit slash?  My own smells bad enough on a hot day.  Anyway, despite myself I had a nibble and it's not half bad actually.  Apart from rabbit slash it contains dried fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds and I'm sure it's very nourishing.  I think Pea has an ulterior motive though.  He's hoping it'll blunt my teeth a little so he doesn't have to be so nervous when I'm on his lap having my fur brushed.    

Mr Mubarak's Friend

Gee it's been hot the last couple of days.  Pea and Chook might be fruitcakes but they are thoughtful fruitcakes.  I was laying in my cage as limp as a month old carrot when Chook puts one of those freezer blocks wrapped in a tea towel into my cage.  I immediately sat on it and oh boy did that feel good.  Before that it was hot enough to cook a cavy's cojones.

Someone else who's cooking these days is President Mubarak of Egypt.  I know all about his problems because I like to sit and watch the telly through the bars of my cage.  Now that's not as sad and pathetic as it sounds.  For example it's not as sad and pathetic as internet dating.  Even Pea is not desperate enough to try that, which is just as well because Chook would have him in front of me in the queue for neutering before he could say "Can't Billy go first?"

Anyway, where was I?  Ah yes - Mr Mubarak.  Now I used to like that nice Irish gentleman Mr O'Barmer.  He seemed like a reasonable sort of chap, but today I heard him come out with the most breathtaking piece of hypocrisy I've heard since Pea said I was a bit smelly last week.  He said that only the Egyptian people have the right to say who that want as a leader.  Who the hell does he think has been keeping that old bastard Mubarak there for the last thirty years, and lets face it, America has form with this kind of thing.  It's not just America either.  It's Britain, Australia, France, Belgium and many other so called western powers.  They're all happy for people to live under despots as long as they're "our despots."  And they're equally happy to fund the armies and police forces that keep the populace under control.  Here's just a few examples for you.  Pinochet in Chile, The Shah of Iran, Debayle in Nicaragua and yes, even Saddam Hussein.  It's all very well saying that these leaders were valuable strategic allies but they usually end up either as deadly enemies or become so deeply unpopular that they are ousted and replaced by someone far worse.

That's all fine, by all means keep your friendly local despot in power if you think he's going to keep the less friendly despots at bay, but don't pretend to be surprised when it all goes pear shaped and most of all, don't patronise us.  Even a guinea pig with hot reproductive organs knows that leaders like Mubarak don't stay leaders against the will of their own people for long without help from their powerful friends.  Meanwhile I'm very grateful to my not so powerful friends for helping to keep my dangly bits cool.