A Bird In The Mouth

Have you ever had a cotton bud dipped in paraffin oil shoved up your bottom passage? Oh come now, you must have. It's actually not as bad as it sounds as long as whoever is holding the cotton bud isn't smoking. Well anyway, that's how my week started and it was all down hill from there really. My staff noticed that Badger and I weren't pooping quite as prolifically as we usually do, and that I was looking particularly unhappy, which is unusual for me; normally I'm such a happy little soul as you know.  It was immediately assumed that we both had a dose of impaction - constipation to you humans. We big butch boar guinea pigs are prone to this condition, especially as we get older. Our poops queue up inside our bottom passages like a crowd of teenage girls waiting for the doors to open at a Justin Bieber concert. Trouble is the doors never open and more and more teenage girls pile up and eventually go all squishy and smelly.  Eventually we have to have an enema and the afore-mentioned paraffin oil soaked cotton bud shoved up the old poo-shooter to lubricate things.

Anyway, as it turns out Badger had impaction, but I had what the vet thought was a bacterial infection of the gut. The fact that I squirted pea soup a la Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (only it originated from the opposite end) all over her nice clean overalls may have prejudiced her opinion. So I was given a course of antibiotics which partially worked and then I started to go backwards again, to such an extent that I had to have a night in hospital among the yelping dogs and meowing cats. Jeez those things can snore! I didn't get a moment's sleep. Consequently I was absolutely knackered the next day when I finally came home. My staff thought I was going to become a late guinea pig. I had to sleep in their room that night which was worse than the one I spent at the vet. At least the cats only snored through their upper orifice!

Well, I was still alive in the morning, if living with staff like mine can truly be called being alive. I did not feel well though. I refused to both eat and deliver bush chocolate, so it was back to the vet, who gassed me to sleep and fiddled with my teeth.  Poor Dr Cara had come in specially to look after me on her day off, The theory was that my teeth were dodgy and causing me pain, thus making me reluctant to eat, and obviously if you don't eat you don't produce bush chocolate and this very rapidly becomes serious for us guinea pigs. Our liver explodes or something.

Anyway despite the vet doing her very best for me I was still half dead by the middle of the week. I'd nibble a bit of basil for a moment and then have to have a lie down - a bit like my male staff after he's worn himself out doing the washing up. So my staff were quickly on the phone to a specialist guinea pig vet a hundred and twenty kilometres away in Brisbane and before I could say "Please don't make me drive to Brisbane with my male staff" I was driving to Brisbane with my male staff. Both staff actually. My female staff was navigating, yelling instructions like "Turn now!" without actually saying which way, and "Straight ahead here." at T-junctions. After nearly two hours of this kind of thing we arrived at the vet surgery and I was whisked in to see Doctor Vanessa who weighed me and didn't exactly endear herself to me by telling me I was too fat and that I shouldn't be eating the pet shop dry food because it contains grains, seed and nuts, all of which have atendency to contribute to exploding liver syndrom. I also shouldn't be eating parsley because it might block up my willy with stones and stop me peeing, or make the wee squirt out at odd angles like a hose pipe with a finger over the spout.

Why guinea pigs shouldn't eat parsley.

After what seemed like hours of Dr Vanessa telling me and my staff what I couldn't eat, she then started on a list was what I am allowed, and believe me, it was a lot shorter than her first list. She also recommended a certain brand of dry food that contains nothing tasty at all. My staff bought some, but I can't tell you what it tastes like because I refuse to sample it. I suppose I'll have to one day because it doesn't look like I'll be getting anything else. Dr Vanessa also told me that I have to eat a lot of hay, as if I was some sort of animal. Honestly, I don't why my staff listen to a word she says.

Once again my staff left me to have unspeakable things done to me by the vet. Once again they gassed me and poked about in my mouth. Then when I woke up they pronounced that there was a bird in there. A thrush apparently, and this thrush was making my mouth sore and stopping me from eating. I looked doubtfully up at Dr Vanessa as she stood over my hospital cage. If I'd had a thrush in my mouth I'm sure I would have known, what with all the wing flapping, pecking and the like. Not to mention the pooping. It turns out that they couldn't just removed this bloody bird for some reason (Maybe it had made a nest in my tonsils - I don't know.) and when my female staff came to collect me a couple of days later she was told that she'd have to squirt this horrid yellow liquid that smells of marzipan into my mouth. She was told that this would get rid of the thrush. It probably will too because it tastes bloody disgusting.

The source of all my problems.

 

So here I am back at home. I've lost a lot of weight and I'm still a bit limp, but I am better and for the moment I prefer to be hand fed. I also like to make my male staff feel guilty for making me have that awful yellow gunk to get rid of the bird in my mouth. I suppose one of these days it'll get as sick of the stuff as I am and fly out. I tell you what though, I'm never going to sleep with my mouth open again.

 

 

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE

 

Tell you what, you don't want to step in a puddle of Billy's anti-bird squirty stuff. It's really sticky and makes your feet smell worse than one of Billy's male staff's running shoes - and they've been banned under the chemical weapons treaty.