Scarred For Life

The other evening my staff discovered that Boris is losing a lot of hair. His little pink body is showing through his normally thick fur. My staff said he looks like the top of Prince Charles' head after he spent too long in the sun without a hat at one of his mum's garden parties. Anyway, he had to pay a visit to the vet and while she was examining his tummy fur he obligingly supplied a urine sample which the vet just avoided getting a faceful of with remarkably quick reflexes. Boris then equally as obligingly provided a sample of bush chocolate and was most put out when the vet displayed little interest in collecting either of them.

 "Mites!" She declared having scraped half of Boris' skin off with a scalpel and examined it minutely under a microscope. My staff tell that a microscope is a kind of instrument normally used for finding politicians' honesty glands and white supremacists brains. The vet then stabbed poor old Boris with a needle that he reckons must have been meant for a rhino. Still, he survived and he and my staff returned home clutching a tube of evil smelling ointment that he has to have smeared on his back once a week for three weeks, and get this! Baci and I have to have it too!  I told my staff in no uncertain terms that I DO NOT HAVE MITES. "Mites" I explained, "are only attracted to inferior rodents with German accents and bratwurst breath. "It would" I continued, "be a gross injustice - nay, a monumental insult to assume that I, of all guinea pigs - cavy royalty, a descendant of my great ancestor King Cavy William the third of Peru, would have something as common as mites." However, as usual all the ignoramuses heard was "Wheek wheek rumble wheek putt putt wheek." So I got smeared with the bloody stuff anyway. I showed my disapproval by refusing to eat my dinner - for thirty seconds. That'll show 'em.

You all look reasonably intelligent and on the ball for humans, so you may remember that my male staff had to shave his knees a couple of weeks ago because the fizzy-oh-terrorist wanted him to look extra stupid when walking around the town with his shorts on. It worked superbly by the way. Everyone sniggers and points at my male staff as he passes by in the street. Come to think of it they did that before he shaved his knees. In any case, the shaving of the knees seemed to evoke some childhood memories for him due to the scars that the hair removal revealed, proving that his clumsiness and ineptitude is not a recent affliction, but has in fact apparently been going on for many, many years. It is my understanding that he almost strangled himself with his own umbilical cord before he was born and then got so lost after he left his mum's womb that he was a month late and weighed about twenty five kilos. He was so late that the midwife didn't bother smacking his bum, but shaved his stubble instead.

Anyway, with his newly shaved shiny knees he gathered the household around him, my female staff, Paolo the budgie, Boris, Baci and myself to tell the story of each scar. Baci immediately curled up and went to sleep, but my male staff's droning voice kept the rest of us awake.
 "This scar here", he said, pointing to a long faded white line, "I got when I was two years old. I tripped over next door's cat in the garden and cut myself on a sharp piece of slate. There was blood everywhere, but even then I was quick thinking." My female staff rolled her eyes. I picked them up and rolled them back to her. Hah! Just kidding. My male staff continued. "Oh yes indeed. I just grabbed half a dozen bull ants and got them to bite me so that they wound closed. Then I just carried on playing after making sure that next door's cat was okay." I thought to myself, if he'd fallen on the cat there's no way it would be okay. "I never did have proper stitches. The bull ants did the trick and I just pulled them out a few days later." Boris was about to point out that they don't have bull ants in gardens in Northampton, England, but a sharp look from yours truly silenced him. Better to let my male staff have his Baby Bear Grills fantasy than have him ramble some half witted explanation of how bull ants came to be in his garden.

And so it went on, scar after scar. Dawn was breaking over the glittering Coral Sea and little Baci was stirring and starting to look for his breakfast as my male staff finally got to the last scar - a relatively small one. "I was thirteen when I got this one." He said. Unlucky for us, I thought. "Some silly bugger slammed a glass door in my face and I put my hand out to stop it and my arm went straight through it and ripped half my arm off." I've told you a billion times not to exaggerate, I thought, but once again kept my piggy lips buttoned. "The blood was running down my arms and dripping all over the floor, but I was a tough kid, not as tough as I am now obviously, but pretty tough." I thought of how he cried when Badger passed away and thought to myself, oh yes, you are one hellova tough nut.
"I just found a few friends," he went on, "and we played football for three hours. By the time we'd finished, the pitch was more red than green and I'd lost so much blood that I was about the same shade of white as the goalposts. Then I went home for dinner, but Mum and Dad were so horrified by the gaping hole in my arm that they rushed me to hospital and because there were no bull ants around I had to have fifteen stitches.
 "That doesn't explain the scar on your knee." Said my female staff and received a savage glare from the rest of us. Paolo almost fell of his perch. We had all hoped that that was the end of the story and that we would finally get some breakfast.
 "I was coming to that." Said my male staff. I was afraid you might be, I thought.
 "After dinner I went to my room to play some records with my arm in the sling that the nurse told me I had to wear for a week. I was sitting on my bed listening to Black Sabbath and the steady beat of the neighbours banging on the wall and screaming "TURN THAT BLOODY RACKET OFF!" when I noticed my favourite penknife on my bedside table. I picket it up and started fiddling with it, trying to open it with one hand because my right hand was out of action in the sling. I almost had it open when it snapped shut and sliced into my finger. There was blood flying everywhere again and I instinctively flicked my finger away which opened the knife fully so that it sliced even more deeply into my finger. That flick then caused the knife to loop gracefully into the air. I was sucking on my half severed finger as the knife fell, seemingly in slow motion and I watched in horrified fascination as it stuck into my leg just above my knee. Somehow I staggered from my bedroom, my right arm in a sling, my left hand dripping blood all over the carpet and a penknife sticking out of my leg with more blood running down my shin.
Muuu-uuum! I shouted. I think I might have cut myself again."
 "Right." I said. "Can we have our breakfast now please?"

Boris' Bit

It is not beink fair zat Herr Billy is blamink me for havink to be schmeared mit der schtinky stuff. His female staff tells me zat he himself had der mites ven he vas ein kleines baby. Zo he can be vheeking all he likes, I still sink zat it vas him zat gave me der verdammt  mites.

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