Getting a Guinea Pig

Did you know that guinea pigs can live as long as five to seven years? Did you also know that guinea pigs’ teeth are always growing? I bet you didn't know that guinea pigs are very social pets! Guinea pigs are a lot more interesting and fun than they may seem -- However, at the same time, they need a bit more care than you’d think. If you want a guinea pig, you've come to the right place to learn about some things that can be pretty vague in other writings.

            If you’re thinking about getting a guinea pig, you should first decide if a guinea pig would work for you. There are two obvious things to think about; Money and family. Can you afford to care for one? Are your pets guinea pig safe? Will they attack it? Would your children understand how to care for a guinea pig? Those are the basic questions. However, there is one more you should ask yourself which you may not have thought of at first: What about the guinea pig’s schedule? Guinea pigs like having a set schedule. For example, maybe everyday you’d change the guinea pig’s water at 4:00 AM. Maybe you’d change its bedding every Monday at 5:00 PM. And you certainly can’t forget that guinea pigs need out of cage time every day, or else they’ll get lonely and bored. My guinea pig squeals a lot when she gets lonely, so yours might, too. She’s as loud as both my dogs combined!

            Second of all, think about how many guinea pigs you want, and what their genders will be. Since they’re really social, you might want to get two or more, so they can keep each other company when you can’t. I advise you to get the same gender, though, since one boy and one girl guinea pig equals many little guinea pigs! And I do mean many. They’re pretty fast breeders!

            Back to the topic of out-of-cage time, there are some things you need to set up before your little guinea pig can roam and explore. First of all, you really should clean the floor well. You may think it doesn’t matter, but it does! At one point, I doubted its importance too -- But then Spike, my guinea pig, started chewing on our shoes, eating our shedding dogs’ fur, and gnawing on table legs! I didn’t doubt it at all after that, and you shouldn’t, either. Second, keep all wires away. If your new pet nibbles one, they’ll get quite a shock! Finally, block off the areas under couches and beds. The guinea pig could slip under there and end up getting stuck, or being hard to get out!

            If you think you could handle a guinea pig, I really suggest that you get one! They can be fun and make great pets if you take care of them well. So if you have the opportunity to care for one and you can, take it! Don’t let it just slide by, or you’ll regret not having a cute friendly addition to your home!

(Author's Note: Can't indent the first paragraph because of Blogger!)

A crowd of small children flooded the playground, leaving no space for the door to close. There was a rush of noise that swamped the area despite the fact the kids had now spread out to cover more ground. They split into their usual groups, making conversation and swarming to the monkey bars as they usually did. And in the middle, there stood two girls talking quietly to each other, roaming a bit but never acknowledging anyone else.

“Weren’t we going to play kitchen today? I thought we agreed on that in the morning!”

“I don’t wanna play kitchen anymore, Sammy.” One girl, with dark brown hair and eyes, shook her head and frowned.

“But you said we could!” Whined the other girl.

“I know what I said, but I don’t wanna anymore. We could play frisbee, though.”

“I’d just get hit in the face! Something else.” Sammy brushed a stray blonde hair back with the rest.

“Well, that’s all I can think of.”

“I don’t have any games, Alyssa! I just wanted to play kitchen.”

“Then we’ll come up with something better, right? What if… We were cats?” Alyssa let out a ‘meow’ for effect.

“But our parents would get angry that we were crawling in the grass! We could ask a teacher, maybe?”

“Fiiine. But otherwise I still vote for cats!” The two skipped, together, to the nearest adult. The brown-haired girl was meowing with every step, and when they stopped, she began to repeatedly lick the back of her hand and rubbed her forehead in an imitation of a cat cleaning itself.

“We don’t know what to play!” Sammy clung to the teacher’s legs, hugging them determinedly, to get her attention. She pushed the child off and then leaned down a bit. “We’re so bored.”

“Why don’t you two go and see if you can swing across all the monkeybars? If you can, try it again, but pretend you’re actual monkeys.” The teacher feigned happiness with a wide smile, but her impatience and annoyance was obvious. “If not that, climb up a slide. Or try getting down one without sliding.” She straightened out a bit, satisfied that the girls had been appeased.

They had not been appeased.

“The monkey bars are too full, and both of us can’t get across them, and Sammy doesn’t even like monkeys. We can both already climb up all the slides, every single one, and we can just climb down using the sides. There isn’t anything at all to play!” Alyssa replied.

The teacher sighed and motioned to the near-empty basket a few feet away. “Play with something in there. Come up with a new way to use something. Go inside -- you don’t have to be outside, you know -- and keep the little kids company, or maybe even help out.”

“No, we need something else!” Alyssa and Sammy complained in unison.

The teacher stood fully, frowning, her frustration clear on her face. “Listen, girls. I have lots of adult stuff to do, and you two are very creative. You’ll find something.” With that, the teacher quickly walked to the door and went inside.

“One vote for cats!” Alyssa cried out immediately, raising her hand high. “Two votes!” She raised her other hand.

“Wait!” Sammy shouted, forcing both Alyssa’s hands down. “Wait. Wait. Look.” She pointed to one of the slides on the playground. “Look at that.”

“What?”

“It’s a face, Alyssa! The slide is the neck, and it’s smiling really big, and those big metal things are the eyes! It must be a giant or something. See? Do you see it?”

“No -- Ooooh, wait. Now I see it -- Do you think it’ll eat us?”

“It does look pretty hungry…”

“But its smiling.”

“A mean smile! Run, Alyssa!” The two friends took off sprinting.

“It’s right behind us! Don’t turn around!”

“That only makes me want to!”

“I can’t go fast enough!” Alyssa suddenly stopped in her tracks and Sammy spun to face her.

“Keep going!” Sammy commanded, faking desperation and fear, even though she was unable to hold back a smile at the amount of fun she was having.

“I can’t! It has me!” Alyssa began walking backwards slowly, climb up the stairs to the playground. Her friend jumped forward, grabbing her arm and then holding her ground as the brown-haired girl pulled against her. Eventually, though, her arm slipped free and Alyssa ran up to the slide. Sammy followed close behind. “Heeeeelp!” She laid down on her stomach, feet first, in the slide and latched onto the platform. The other girl grabbed one arm and attempted to pull her up as she scrambled to climb out of the slide. “It’ll eat me!”

“I’m not strong enough to pull you up! Climb! Climb!”

“I’m slipping! I can’t hold on!”

“Noooo!” Sammy cried out as Alyssa slipped out of her grip and went down the slide, slowly because of the friction.

“Go on without me! Save yourself!” Alyssa shouted dramatically, climbing off the slide and laying down with her limbs spread out to fake being dead. She stuck out her tongue as much as she could and closed her eyes.

“I can’t run away! It got me, too!” The blue-eyed girl slid down on her stomach, clawing at the side with her short nails as she did so. Somewhere along the line, she flipped so she was going headfirst, and so ended up almost crashing into the ground. She splayed out next to her friend. “What now?”

“Is there another monster in the stomach of the monster that ate us?”

“...I guess so. Will it eat us?”

“Probably, but is it alive?”

“Yes, it’s moving!” Sammy sat up and shook one of the unsteady poles of the playground so that the slide rumbled and squeaked. “I think it sees us! It’s looking straight at us! We need to hide somewhere!”

“It has me! Not again!” Just as Alyssa began climbing back up to the slide, she heard a much too quiet bell ring out, signaling the end of recess. The two grouped back together, pushing back inside, and then sat down on the one carpet in the room. When a daycare teacher began loudly issuing instructions, they leaned towards each other and began whispering.

“Continue next recess?”

“Yes!”

“Are you gonna change your mind again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I hope you don’t. That was really fun -- And you’ll have to get out of the monster before you can play something else!”

Many Genres

What is the line between fantasy and real life? Usually, they are separated by pure impossibility or logic. Monsters don’t roam the streets, dogs don’t talk, dark and life-changing secrets probably aren’t hidden away in the oldest buildings. But if you read enough, you’ll find that at some points, the line between fantasy and real life becomes smeared, mixing the two, blending them. Sometimes, the line can disappear completely. Those are the books I like -- ones where I can imagine myself in those situations, where I can see them happening in the near future. Those are the books that leave an impression on me, make me think, draw me in so much that in some part of my mind, I can believe I’m in the story.

Surprisingly enough, though, I didn’t start out like that at all. My reading origins are filled to the top with lessons, realistic fiction and books with facts and the truth. Junie B. Jones, The Giving Tree, Dr. Suess -- If it had something I could take from it, anything I could learn, I’d read it without a single word. If I tried that now, I wouldn’t make it a page before I started complaining! And, out of all those, Junie B. Jones was my absolute favorite. Funny and I got some knowledge out of it? Count younger me in! I remember reading one book every night, and when I ran out, I’d even reread them. I just could not get enough of those books!

It was in middle school when I started leaning into the popular current, following the flow and letting it sweep me to book after book, liking some, hating others -- And before I knew it, I found my feet planted in the horror section of the library. If all my friends had taken a curious dip in there, too, why shouldn’t I? So I grabbed a popular scary book, sat down in a chair and began reading. Right away, I realized how much they terrified me. I was constantly tempted to throw the books out a window and curl up under my blankets in fear. But I kept reading, hoping that I’d get used to it. And while I never got used to those books, I did find some that were fun and terrifying -- R.L. Stine’s Choose your own Adventure books. They let me have control, so if I needed to I could try and steer away from horrible situations. My favorite one was called Please, Don’t Feed the Vampire! though I’m still not entirely sure why.

After a while, I started going off towards my current state, hunting down books that mixed fantasy and real life. I haven’t yet changed that -- I still run around looking for those types of books. Once in awhile, though, I’ll go a find a horror book of sorts and I’ll read it, because I’ve still got a slight tug towards that genre. I seemed to have jumped around in favorite book genres a lot in the past, but I’m sure I’ll stick with my current favorite!

Uncaught

Fluttering happily, the bug flew

High up from the ground yet not in the sky

Quickly, quickly, in a sudden panic

It flew from its vicious would-be captor

Two pale hands scraped at the air

And the bug expertly weaved around and in between them,

In an odd dance of fate and life or death

Then suddenly, with a silent swoop

The bug dove down and then back up

And flew away

Quickly, quickly, in a flurry

Breath of Silence

The brisk wind whisked around swiftly with quick movements. It rustled through the autumn trees, dragging leaves along with it on its journey through the forest. And that was the only sound -- Besides it, there was an odd silence that fell over and coated the forest. And that was the only movement -- Besides it, there was an odd stillness that drowned the area. And that was the only scent --the only feeling -- the only anything. That's all it was, for a while. Nothing but wind and a forest.

An eruption of leaves, twigs, dirt disturbed this peaceful nothingness. A second sound emerged finally, then a third, a fourth, a fifth. The sound of horses and shouting filled the air, awaking sleeping animals with the sudden noise. Two men on old brown horses came dashing in at a quickened trot, yelling what sounded like nonsense to the forest residents to each other. The entrance stirred up the forest. Squirrels were sent into a panic, deer rushed to get away, birds scattered, and the entire area fell into a panic. There were intruders!

Plants were beaten down at the invaders' hooves and many bugs were trampled. But the invaders didn't care, only continuing through as the forest went crazy around them. They were reckless, destroying all that came in the path of their horses.

It was a small forest; Yet the invasion seemed to last two eternities and a day despite this fact. When they finally left, there was a minute or two which the forest took to calm and settle. And once again, the wind passed through. It became the only sound -- Besides it, an odd silence again engulfed the place. It became the only movement -- Besides it, an odd stillness took over the forest. And it was the only scent, the only feeling, the only anything.

Nature's Artist

The rolling hills, green with plentiful grass and dotted with brightly colored flowers, seemed to swallow up the light sun overhead with abnormal slowness. The sky's deep blue gave in to the night, promising a return come daytime. To the right, tall lush trees shot up and pierced the air, darkening the ground below them. It was the hint of a forest, green and brown mixed together to create the towering pines. To the left, the scene emptied into vast whiteness. Brushstrokes stained the blank void, dripping blue as it outlined the sky. The hills began to be painted, mixes of green clashing with each other to create a realistic look and day sky turning into night splashed in place. The artist, skillful and wealthy, stepped back with unclean brush and colorful palette in hand to look on at his now finished and quickly drying masterpiece.

Thinking of Hot Cocoa

Freshly made

Invisible steam billows

A soft brown color

Dotted by fluffy white clouds

A glass cup

Stained green and black

Clashes with the liquid inside

A sweet, warm taste

Loved by many

Curled up in a pile

A miniature tornado of pillows and blankets

Cup held carefully and sipped

Truly delicious

A dog waits for a spill near feet

Liquid burns the tongue as sipped

The hotness is ignored

A wonderful treat

Hot cocoa on a freezing Winter night

Paint

Splat

Splash

Paint falls to the canvas like a magnet

Colors carelessly drop

Impossible to know what to expect

Blue, yellow, green

Red, orange

Black, purple, white

So many colors

Together they make a great art piece

Complimenting each other

With no words

A silent masterpiece

A Regrettable Fall

The fabled blade was cold to the touch and dyed a bright silver in the small slices of moonlight peering out of holes in the water dripping ceiling. Behind it, a clean waterfall tumbled on with loud roars that pierced the silence like a bullet. The whole area was celestial and looked as if it had been pulled out of a grand fairy tale of sorts. And then a small boy, with his ragged worn clothes, his sloppy and unkempt hair and one shoe half on his foot, stepped forward. Looking around the area he inched forward with careful movements. Holes in the dusty ground, deep and dark, stared up at him hungrily and threatened to swallow him up if only the boy misplaced one foot for a second long moment, but he passed without more than a glance at the creaking wooden holes. Soon, he was by the sword, and took this opportunity to stretch and lift the top of the glass case that protected the weapon. He then enfolded his hands around the thick handle and tensed.

For an instant, the legendary sword seemed to ease into his grip as if it were already at home with him, as if it were encouraging him on. He picked it up from the open glass case with almost no challenge at all, but his weak figure could not help but stagger over the surprising weight when he triumphantly held it high above his head. He swayed, clutching the sword to his chest, tripping over his own feet with every step backwards. From a distance it may have resembled an odd, ungraceful dance. The boy stayed like this for quite a while, stumbling around blindly while tightly holding the grand sword, until he made one wrong movement. That movement was all it took to change his fate. His foot leaned down as he shifted his weight in the expectation of a sturdy wooden plank but instead found nothingness beneath him. He fell forward, headfirst, and his head hit against the ground quickly. Instead of him falling into the unknown depths, the blade took his place, slipping through his fingers on impact and piercing into the void. The boy cried out in both pain and misery that he had lost his treasure and shakily came to his feet with much trouble.  He left that place forever, not able to face the reality that he had lost the gift because of one simple fall.

A Busy Train Station

Light is flowing downwards

Sunrays through glass

Frozen in place

Warm sunlight split up

Spotlights on a dark stage

Trains, the sound, the music

Dancing people hurry and rush

Carrying their things, a challenge

A crowd of rude remarks,

Of people bumping into each other

No time to sit

No time to stand

Run, run to the trains

The fountain is quiet

Echoes in the large room

A busy Train Station

Author's Note: 

This was from the Warm Up on 1/4/2013