My husband and I are the proud, the sometimes too-proud, owners of two beautiful long-haired guinea pigs. There are a bunch of guinea pig breeds, but our lovies, Miss Ella Fitzgerald and Miss Amelia Bedelia (Ella and Millie for short), seem to be a mysterious combination of bits and pieces of different types that have resulted in a great deal of hairy puffiness and out-of-control cowlicks. This wild hair, spiraled and mohawked and eminently photogenic, has done nothing to hinder their ferocious appetites.

 

Rather, Ella and Millie live for eating. I prefer to think that they live for our love and affection, but in their world, as in the worlds of so many of us, food simply is love. When we come home, instead of running at our feet or licking our faces like puppies, the pigs start squeaking and chirping at the sound of the refrigerator door. These squeaks quickly turn to sirens and wails until we say hello with baby carrots or a leaf or two of kale. Ella prefers to eat food while we hold it. She’d rather savor and nibble at a carrot you hold for her, while Millie viciously grabs her food, her slice of cucumber, her sprig of parsley, her very own carrot, and dashes into her igloo house to eat as quickly and privately as possible. She flies so fast, on her plump little belly and little legs, she goes blurry and moves with insect-like precision. Buchen3

 

Guinea pigs have an amazing behavior when they’re happy or excited. Guinea pig people call this “pop-corning” (I love that even this term comes from the world of food). They involuntarily jump when they’re pleased, bursting into the air with a kind of mini-seizure, all from joy. Guinea pigs tend to grow out of pop-corning when they get older, as their body weight gets harder to lift and their joints get sore. But for Ella and Millie, who are four (in guinea pig land, that’s middle-aged or so), the peel of a green apple, among other treats, can still bring on the happy-seizures.

 

Just any snack won’t do, though. Ella and Millie were initially raised on organic, bio-dynamic veggies from a local farm. They can tell the difference between a carrot and an organic carrot. They eat Timothy hay that comes in the mail in giant fifty-pound boxes because they simply won’t eat the more available orchard hay, and the stuff at the pet store is too scratchy or too brown or too something for their palettes. They wouldn’t touch the expired guinea pig food we once bought by accident (and promptly threw away once we realized our mistake). In short, the girls know food. And they know what they like. They live the way many of us would like to live—with confidence, and with a mouth toward the best.