Pressdog.com

Guinea Stallion

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 03/09/00)

For a few days there, it looked like my guinea pig buddy Pee Wee was going to be a stud -- literally.

When word leaked out that my eight-year-old daughter, Haley, had a virile, potent guinea pig that's all male, if you get my drift, the phone started ringing.

One of Haley's classmate's friend's mom called us up. Seems her daughter has a female guinea pig and wanted to have guinea piglets. The female's biological clock was drumming away -- tick-tick-tick-tick-tick -- and they needed a studly guinea bull to provide the other half of the pregnancy equation. The woman asked my wife, Rhonda, if we'd be willing to fix Pee Wee up with her guinea sow for a "date."

Rhonda relayed the conversation to me. I just looked at Pee Wee. His innocent little white face and black eyes looked back at me, wrinkling his nose and making his usual casual chittering sound.

"You STUUUUUUUUD," I said to Pee Wee. "They're lusty for your male parts. You're just a cheap and tawdry procreation object. You da pig!" Pee Wee gave me a little ear shake, the rodent equivalent of a smug male nod.

It looked very likely that Pee Wee was going to get some. As patriarch and only other male in the family, I felt I should give Pee Wee some advice, man-to-boar. "Better get yourself a bath, big fella," I told Pee Wee while we were watching the X-Files Sunday night. "You want to be clean. Remember, don't rush yourself. Treat the sow with respect and kindness. This is a two-pig deal. Make sure you show her you care and, although you're really only there for your biological value, there's no reason to be rude or abrupt."

Then it hit me: how do we explain this to Haley? She's eight, so we've only covered the basics of reproduction at the 120,000-foot level. And, every time we talked to her obliquely about sex, we slam the word "MARRIED" into the same sentence. I'm not opposed to Haley assuming that it's physiologically impossible to have sex without being married to your partner. She's eight. No need to rush into the cruel reproductive truth just yet.

"So is Pee Wee going to get married?" she asked me as we talked about it. BAM. Right between my eyes. The father in me cheered. In Haley's mind, sex and marriage had been joined, and let no man put them asunder. "Well," I groped, "animals don't really get married."

"Yes they do. They can. They did on 101 Dalmatians," Haley said.

"That's just a movie," I said as she grinned. "Animals don't think like people. Male and female guinea pigs just get together so the female can get pregnant and have babies."

"Do we get one of the babies?" she said.

"NO," I said. "We have Pee Wee. No more guinea pigs."

"But Pee Wee will be sad if he has to leave his babies."

I almost hugged her. A father being sad to leave his babies. What a beautiful assumption from an eight-year-old. "Animal babies have to stay with their mothers when they are just born," I explained. "You know, they get milk from their mothers like calves get milk from their moms."

"I'm not going to let Pee Wee do it," she said, resolutely.

OK, do I really want to argue that Haley should let her guinea pig have wanton, commitment-free sex with a strange sow and then just scurry away from the resulting babies? Is that really the position I want to take here?

"Well," I shrugged. "It's your decision. He's your guinea pig."

On the way out of the room, I stopped at Pee Wee's cage. He was gnawing on a "You Da Pig" carrot I gave him earlier.

"Sorry, buddy. Doesn't look like you're going to score."

A week later, the sow's family called Rhonda back. Pee Wee's services were no longer required. Turns out the sow's owner's school has a guinea boar who spends the weekends at class member's houses. You see where that's going. He may start out sleeping on the couch, but in the middle of the night, boar pays a visit to sow, and you know what I'm saying. I wondered if the public school system had any idea that they were contributing to these wanton pig fornication plans. The second-grade class pet had been unmasked as a weekend guinea gigolo.

The school knows about it, Rhonda said. The school wants a piglet of their own out of the copulation. Well, I guess everyone's happy.

Except Pee Wee. Ah, he's better off remaining a virgin. What if this conjugal visit stoked his testosterone making him unruly, irritable and constantly looking to escape his cage in search of sows? In other words, what if Pee Wee's sexual awakening turned him into a sex-crazed Guinea Stallion?

I'd have to get him "altered" by a vet or something. No way I want to explain that to Haley. I don't even want to think about it myself. Let's just consider this a reproductive bullet dodged and let it go at that.

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