Small Rodents Make Wonderful Pets

1033 Words3 Pages

Anyone who has owned one would

readily aggree that hamsters, girlbils, and mice provide an owner with

hours of amusement and years of companionship. Rabbits are fabulous

for those who are looking for a quiet playmate, while rats and ferrets

are hyperactive and surprisingly intelligent. Guinea pigs are another

very popular choice for a small pet. A website dedicated to guinea

pigs boasts on their front page that there is no question that "guinea

pigs make excellent pets [and are] docile, low maintenance, and

unbelievably cute."

I strongly beg to differ, unless "docile" means "boring" and "low

maintenance" means that you only need to scoop up piggy pellet poop

every few minutes. Calling a guinea pig "unbelievably cute" is at,

very best, a far stretch. Their bodies are shaped like a packing tube,

fat through the middle and flat at both ends.

To anyone who is considering purchasing a guinea pig and is convinced

that no other rodent will do, I would urge them to go to a local

lumber yard and get themselves a lovely block of wood instead. I am

convinced that after weighing the positives and negatives, an ordinary

log would prove to be a far better pet than a guinea pig.

For the sake of specifics, let's assume that the common guinea pig is

being compared to a standard block of Northern Red Oak wood, commonly

used for firewood.

Consider first that very little is actually known about the history of

the guinea pig. No one is exactly sure where these creatures

originally came from, so their native habitat may have been a sandy

desert, a forrest, or mountain regions. This emptiness of information

regarding the species' past does no...

... middle of paper ...

...to a short attention span, the guinea pig may lose

interest in the poop before it has finished consuming (re-consuming?)

it, and drops it where they are standing, often in a high-traffic area

of a carpeted floor.

Although a pet wooden block has some similarity to the guinea pig in

that it naturally is very still, he makes no nerve-grinding cries for

attention and produces no waste product what-so-ever. This last fact

alone sends a wooden block soaring above a guinea pig in the contest

of who would make a better pet.

Compound all these painful piggy truths with the undeniable fact that,

even in apperance, a guinea pig is nothing more than a fur-covered log

with eyeballs, it leads to the question, "Well, what does the guinea

pig do that the block of wood doesn't do better?"

The answer, quite simply, is nothing.

More about Small Rodents Make Wonderful Pets

Open Document