Pigs!

March 25, 2008

So, one of my guinea pigs started rumblestrutting the other guinea pig, which means that she was doing a mating dance. They don’t have names yet, but I will call them Pinky and Ginger for the sake of this story. Ginger was doing some weird behavior like rubbing her butt on the ground, and then Pinky would come by and smell it like it was roses, and then she’d go over to Ginger and start making this really sweet rumbling-gurgling-purring noise and wiggling her butt back and forth (rumblestrutting). And she kept following Ginger and doing this dance and sniffing her butt. I thought it was kinda funny, as I’d heard that sometimes female guinea pigs do this with each other. The next day, when I saw that it was still going on, I decided I’d better have a look at their little privates just to be sure they are both girls. I looked, which was difficult because they scrabble around a lot, and they looked pretty much the same, so I was satisfied. As the behavior got more aggressive, I decided to look online at pictures of boys and girls just to be absolutely sure. And sure enough, if you look reallllly close, Pinky has a little tiny penis. So, I panicked and quickly built a second cage and stuck Ginger in there. As soon as I separated them, they started wheeking loudly and have been very upset ever since. I talked to Henry about it, and we decided that we need to get Pinky neutered so that they can be together again, because they miss each other and hate to be alone. If Ginger turns out to be pregnant, we’ll deal with that hurdle when we come to it. So I called an exotics vet in Twin Falls, and he said that we would have to wait to neuter Pinky until he’s three months old. Now, I’m just not sure what to do with them until then, because they are both very lonely and upset, but I certainly can’t put them back together until after he’s neutered. And then of course there’s the pregnancy issue to deal with as well, if Ginger turns out to be pregnant. I don’t want to get them same-sex friends to keep them company, because who knows how many babies Ginger could have if she’s pregnant? Two pigs are really all I have space for at the moment.