Living In Filth

The whole family loves the guinea pigs, but at this point, they are dependent on me for their food, water, and cleanliness.   That's not entirely true, as my daughter does a "poop sweep" when she comes to see them, picking up the current deposits and throwing them away in the trash can.  Which is really helpful, but it's only one of the many things that have to be done to keep the little guys living a clean and healthy life. 

Last night I was tired and didn't go up to do my nighttime clean and reset of their space.   When I got in today after the bring your parents to school with my son I checked them out and I was so upset to see them huddled in hidey spots with poop under them.   They were out of pellets (they had enough hay to last a week, but it also gets urinated on in places so I keep small amounts in different spots.)

I cleaned everything up, put clean covers down and gave the some green beans which they were quite happy about.   It takes a lot of time, but they are very sweet and we all love them. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter will bring us a guinea pig usually once per day.   Tonight we talked about how one smelled bad.   I told her I'd learned they really didn't need a full bath, just their underside.  I took him up and washed him in the sink.   He is funny when you try to dry him; he hates his underside being touched but I needed to dry all the fur between his front and back legs—and there's quite a lot of that.   He had a fit, but the fluffy towel didn't get upset and finished drying him as though it hadn't even noticed. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son had us in his class today and we were the students.  We did math word problems and binomial equations and the word of the day, which we both got correct.  I learned that the huge OED in the classroom had a magnifying glass with it because each page had nine pages in tiny, tiny, tiny font on them.   I finally found the word.  It was tough!