Puberty Blues

This week's post is dedicated to Puppy @PuppyaGuineaPig who recently passed away leaving his staff absolutely devastated. Puppy was one of my oldest Twitter friends, a star of the silver screen and an absolute legend in his own pigloo.  Boris, Baci and I held a minutes silence in honour of his passing.  Puppy my old pal, we will miss you.  The world is a sadder place without you.

In my last post I mentioned that Boris, Baci and I were about to head off on holiday.  Two weeks at the luxurious Noosa Pet Resort.  Well we're back, and Boy! Did we have a good time.  Baci certainly must have because he barely remembers a moment of it.  I think this is mostly because puberty and all that that entails kicked in while we were there.  In guinea pigs puberty doesn't manifest itself in the sprouting of short curly hairs in odd places like it does in humans - obviously not, since we're covered in hair anyway. No, in guinea pigs the sudden testosterone overdose causing us to get, shall we say, a trifle excitable.  The fact that there were to girly piggies in the same room probably didn't help.  Their sexy perfume must have driven him half mad.  Frankly it just gave me a headache, but then I'm far to old to be interested in that sort of thing these days - much like my male staff.  Actually he and I have quite a lot in common.  We both waddle a bit more than we used to and we both like to sleep a lot. 

Anyway Baci drove poor old Boris mad with his running around in circles and spraying bedding and stinky musk everywhere.  He did this all night, every night. I doubt that Boris got a wink of sleep. Still, at least staying up all night allowed him to be first down to the resort's swimming pool so that he could reserve all the sunbeds with towels.  At four thirty in the morning he'd stagger off to the pool carrying a pile of towels muttering to himself.  "Ich am goink to kill zat klein, braun ratte vun of zese tage."  Then he'd spend the entire day napping and telling any animals who dared to try to use one of the sunbeds. "Excusink me but zat sunbed is reserviert.  Ich vill be usink it in zehn minuten. You can be usink zis vun ven ich have finished mit it."  Then in ten minutes time he'd move on to the next sunbed and allow someone to use the one he'd just vacated. Boris is an interesting character.

Eventually after what seemed like a year, but I'm told was less than two weeks my staff returned from their trip and came to collect us.  They expected us to be pleased to see them, labouring as they were under the misguided notion that we feel any sort of affection for them beyond a strict employer/staff relationship.  We were loaded into our carrying cases while our cavy equipment was piled into the back of the pet taxi and transported back to our house.

Sadly something had changed between Boris and Baci.  Boris had always been Baci's mentor, gently keeping him in line with the occasional piece of avuncular advice or a little nip on the backside if Baci was misbehaving, but during our first night back at home Boris seemed to have had enough of Baci's juvenile antics.  Ever since we shared a room at the resort with those two lady guinea pigs Baci has been disappearing into his pigloo for an hour or so at a time, then reappearing looking somewhat guilty and complaining of blisters on his right front paw.  Boris seemed a little peeved at this behavior and began chasing Baci into a corner of their cage.  The two of them would then sit and glare at each other, nose to nose like a pair of boxers at a pre-bout weigh in. 

My staff thought that it would be best if Baci moved out into his own bachelor pad because if Boris decided that he really had had enough of Baci he could really do him some serious damage since we literally weighs about twice as much.  So a clean cage was prepared and Baci placed therein.  He looked very pleased with himself and already has photos of various topless girly guinea pigs pinned to the walls and there are bits of half eaten carrots and beans strewn all over the floor and a vague spermy sort of smell pervades the cage.  The surprising thing was that Boris moped around with a face as long as a wet weekend in Canberra.  He was actually missing the brat.

That evening my staff let Boris and Baci out of their cages for their usual floor time together.  Initially they seemed pleased to be reunited, but then the swearing started. I was just relieved that my staff couldn't understand what they were saying to each other.  The language was shocking. Baci called Boris a "Silly old fluffy white bratwurst." While Boris accused Baci of being 'Ein klein schokolade kakerlake, und ein große scheiße kopf."  Now I have no idea what either of those things are but I'm guessing that they are not particularly complimentary terms.  Being the hot headed youth that he is, Baci leapt at Boris and both rolled around on the floor snapping savagely at each other.  My male staff pounced on them like a panther - well more like an elderly, arthritic hippo actually.  In any case he managed to separate them before they'd murdered each other, though Baci did emerge from the tussle with a mouthful of white fur.  So there you have it.  Baci and Boris can now no longer even run about on the floor together.  The strange thing is that they chat quite amiably through the bars of their respective cages as though nothing has happened.

Nothing has changed between Baci and I, not that we often meet face to face on the floor, but on the odd occasion when we do neither of us goes for the other's throat.  I really don't know what to make of him if I'm honest, so I tend to run back to my pigloo.  Baci follows on behind sniffing my butt as we go, then as soon as I get to my pigloo I go in and turn around to look out in order to see where Baci is, whereupon he mounts my head and start humping away.  As you can imagine this was rather disconcerting when it first happened, but you get used to it after a while.  One of these days I'm going to bite his dangly bits, that might slow him down a bit.

BORIS' BIT
Der zwei wochen in der Pet Resort has really improved mein Englisch.  Herr Billy says that ich barely haben ein Deutsch accent at all now.  In fact he says zat ich could quvite easily be verwechselt
für ein Aussie. Zis is makink mir sehr proud to sink zat ich haben come such ein long vay in such ein short time.