Pig Palavers

Right so once I’ve got the rabbit to bed (see previous post) the night is not yet my own as I have to get the guinea pigs off the lawn and into their hutches.

Now this isn’t half such a problem because they are confined to a pen and also, as anyone who keeps guinea pigs knows, they are not particularly adept at performing stunts, death defying leaps of fury or (infact) aiming streams of urine into your eyes. No. Guinea pigs mainly just sit. And eat. And produce pellets. And sit some more.

However this doesn’t mean that getting them off the lawn isn’t without potential hazards – the main one being that the pen they are in is longer than the furthest reach of my arms. So if they are up the top end (which they invariable are) I can’t reach them and scoop them up unless I wriggle my entire torso through the cage door. And the cage door and my hips? Well lets just say they have a close relationship – a bit too close.

What a glorious sight it must be, a grown woman on her hands and knees, amidst several thousands guinea pig pellets, a large wood and chicken wire pen straddling her girth. I must appear rather like some kind of giant nightmarish tortoise battling with its own shell.

Of course as I lunge to get the nearest guinea pig the whole contraption comes with me and moves the same number of inches as I do – so the guinea pigs are perpetually just out of reach. Invariably it is at this point that my jeans start to creep down my buttocks revealing several centre inches more flesh than I would wish for and of course, there is very little I can do about it as my arms are trapped in the pen along with the rest of my upper-half.

So I’m not just a tortoise. I’m a tortoise with a builder’s bum.

‘Look kids it’s that woman next door again – she’s crawling around on her hands and knees, showing us all her flowery knickers and several inches of butt-cheek PLUS she’s wearing what looks like a gigantic cage round her hips. Oh and look! She’s trying to back up but her hair is so entwined in the chicken wire she’s well and truly stuck fast. Now THAT children is why you aren’t allowed any pets’.

After a serious of ever more desperate ‘grunt thrust’ manaeovers I do (usually) manage to grasp a pig or two but then I have the tricky problem of getting back out the pen and pulling my trousers up without dropping the guinea pig. So sometimes I just don’t bother and waddle down the garden with my trousers slowly heading towards my socks.

So compared to the rabbit it’s easy but what it is not is ladylike. But I kind of lost the need to be ladylike long long ago.

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