ONE OF OUR FAVORITE PLACES

These beautiful waterfalls and old stone bridge are about 20 minutes down the trail through the woods past the beaver pond and the salmon stream from where we live. We are lucky piggies to live in the Pacific Northwest! Know what's really funny? When we hear songbirds at our feeder during the day or a barred owl hooting at night, YumYum starts giggling! Seriously, then he tries to conversate with the birds and makes lots of giggly sounds because they make him so happy. We listen and it makes us laugh, but quietly, so as not to disturb him or the birds.

We're just simple, natural pigs who love it when mom goes for walks because when she comes home she is hungry, opens up the refrigerator,  and it's all "WHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEK! WHEEK! WE WANT! WE WANT!" from there. We know the specific sounds of her fridge, the veggie bin drawer opening, the plastic bags rattling and what's inside of them, and because guinea pigs have such acute hearing mom can never pretend she is knitting once that fridge door opens. And, she cannot knit. We love nature!

rECYCLED DRYER DOOR: GREETING TO 3 BABY ORCAS, 2009

Mom's Art

Sometimes when mom gets a real bad migraine and starts drawing she can't stop. She calls it "migraine art" but it helps her feel better. She was told by a gallery curator that she was an "Outsider Artist" and he showed her work. She later discovered that it meant she was probably insane, obviously self-taught, quite likely from the deep South, and had no formal exposure to mainstream art in Western culture. Since we love mom and won't reveal how many of these are true...you can decide for yourself! When she draws she gets real quiet and we usually just take a nap, but sometimes we watch, then chew new designs on our cardboard boxes. Art is FUN!

EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER!

The other day, mom's best art/spiritual friend, am, observed that she had always imagined that guinea pigs were just little animals who sat in bare cages doing nothing. We love am and when we heard this we realized how many other people must think the same thing-- HORROR OF HORRORS! And we know why...that is how we are depicted in the media and in petstores and on boxes and bags of pet food, the image of, oh, I can't go there again. Much can be said about today's media and how we guinea pigs are depicted, but my cousin, Pando, is an editorial commentator for NPR (NotEnough Pigs Rescued) and he gets pretty worked up about the subject so we'll save that for him. He will be featured in the near future.

Meanwhile, get a load of YumYum's digs: a loft with a ferret sleeping bag, a soft square house, a cardboard box to play with and chew on, his water bottle, food bowl, salt lick, tons of fresh timothy hay, and behind and beneath his loft is his special hiding place that nobody knows about except him. One day mom put a nice microfleece fabric in his soft house since it was cold but when she looked for it later it had disappeared. That's how she discovered the "Secret Garden." YumYum had pulled the microfleece out of his soft house and secretly stashed it in his Luxurious Secret Hiding Place. He has an image to keep up as a "tough guy" with the mohawk running down his back and that top notch on his head and he cops an attitude that he's Big & Bad. But secretly he's still a baby who loves to cuddle and he made his secret garden soft and cuddly -- and SECRET!

As you can see, however, he defies the common misconception that we sit, unmoving, poker-faced, staring into space in empty cages. And we hope that if you have a guinea pig his cage will be full of enrichment to stimulate his wildest imagination! AND that's just the cage...wait till you see our "Runabout" area - it's FUN on top of FUN!