A humerus update on the guinea pig project

Kind of similar to that, I guess. Anyway. So, going back to the history, as I had heard about them, looked all over the island for it. There’s only one other breeder on the island, and all of his are completely inbred. I went ahead and bought some of his inbreds just to raise them for a while to see what it would be like. And then, ultimately, to eat some. And I spent about a year doing that and saying, yeah, this is really a good animal. This is really a good animal. You really can raise these guys just with grass and weeds.

Rabbits need a little bit more care. Not much, but a little bit more. So, these guys are actually infinitely easier. Anyway, then I was like, okay, well, enormous amount of time and energy to find breeding stuff. You can’t have inbreds forever. That’s not good. You’ve got to take care of the genetics. So, I spent an enormous amount of time and energy. Yes, almost all of these guys are pets. Since I’ve been banned from Facebook groups or when I talk to breeders, they’re like, what do you want to do with them? And then click. Finally, I found a breeder that has a large selection, and she totally understands about eating them, and if I eat some herself.

So, we’ve made a friendship, and she’s really helped me get started. I bought 10 from her, and I did the trip. It was actually in Texas at this big national convention. Anyway, I’d been working with them for some months, and now I said, okay, I need to get more studying genetics. We need at least 20 unique individuals for genetic viability on the island here. So, I made arrangements, and I went to South Florida to meet up. There was a guy with a business with a sprinter van, and he just drives like cats and dogs and pets all over the country.

So, he had the 20 guinea pigs that I had arranged with Nina, 10 boys and 10 girls, for me to pick them up. I met him in a parking lot in South Miami. So, I’m getting ready to go. Oh, by the way, when you’re carrying, I used to carry the guinea pigs. I’m using these cat carriers here. Now, these cat carriers can open up on three different ways. So, there’s a lot of room when I’m like in a waiting lounge or the night before, before I get on the airplane. So, there’s a lot of expansion.

And then, of course, when I have to, I pack them all in, and then this meets the TSA regulations, airline regulations. It’s the right dimensions. And because you cannot let these guys get too hot, in the bottom of that, I have these frozen packs just to make sure that the temperature would not get too hot there. And, you know, they weren’t directly on the pack. It was a little bit hay and a little bit of a towel-type surface. But that way, it would keep the temperature down there. Because, you know, I’m going from South Florida.

Actually, Fort Lauderdale was the only flight that I could get out that would allow me to have the pigs on. Now, the other way to travel with them is, we just pack this thing full of Timothy hay, and then also things like cut-up cucumber and cut-up carrots and stuff. And the cucumber and the carrots have a lot of water content. That way, I don’t have to have water bottles and that whole thing. So, I made sure they had lots of fresh food like that. And then, you just pack that carrier full of hay, and it’s almost where they can’t even move because there’s so much hay.

And they just munch on that hay, and they’re having a good time, and, you know, they’re pretty happy, and you can get through the trip that way. And Nina, the breeder, had intentionally, she knew I wanted these. Most of these guys are only about two months old. They’re pretty nice, big piggies for only being two months old. And she raised them together. She raised the boys together and the girls together so that, you know, because, you know, there’s a lot of animals in one’s face, right? It’s because she knew that I would be traveling that way with them.

So, I get to the airport, and… Oh, wait a minute. I’m sorry. Before that, I needed to go… I didn’t have quite enough hay, so before I left, I stopped over at the pet supermarket. There was such a thing. There’s a pet supermarket. I buy a big old bag of Timothy hay, and while I’m there, the guy goes, oh, yeah, you got guinea pigs? Oh, yeah. They have guinea pigs for sale. So, I’m looking at their guinea pigs. And he says, yeah, we’re having a sale. We’ll have a buy one, get one for a guinea pig.

And I’m like, that just doesn’t sound good to me. A buy one, get one for a guinea pig. But he had a couple of really nice big ones. I said, how old are they? He says, I don’t know. They’ve been here for months and months. So, you know, they’re mature. So, I said, well, I also… The records that I’ve gotten from Nina, I’d already paid for them when we’d set this whole thing up. And they weren’t quite as genetically diverse as I had hoped. They’re not like completely 20 different unique individuals. But so, I thought, well, I’ll just pick these two up.

They were clearly unrelated. That’ll help with the genetic diversity. And, you know, 10 guinea pigs, 11 guinea pigs. What’s the difference, right? You know, so anyway, I get the two up. I’m at the airport, and TSA is a thing. It’s surprisingly not that bad. It’s tedious. But I’ve done this enough now. I just go in there with confidence and tell them what they need to do, and they do it. And, you know, I get TSA pre-check. And basically, I go through the metal, you know, not the whirligig high-frequency thing, but the regular metal detector with the guinea pigs.

And then they take me in a separate room, and I say, give me, you know, one of the regular luggage bins. Yeah, anything. Anything with, like, a six-inch grip, right, a box, anything. And I take all of the guinea pigs out of one, like I took all the boys out, put them in that box, then they took the cat carrier and ran it through their whatever they do. They bring that back, make sure they didn’t have drugs. Then I put all the boys back in, and then we do the same thing for the girls.

And the TSA agents were fighting over who was going to get the process, maybe because of the cuteness. Oh, my God, they’re so adorable. You can see these guys in here. This is not my best camera ever. I’ll get you some better footage in a minute. I’m never saying my battery went out on my favorite camera. While I’m waiting, here’s the little side story. And this is a story just for fun. I asked the TSA agent, I said, what’s, you know, like, one of the strangest things that you’ve seen come through here in a while? She goes, yeah.

A couple weeks ago, a woman came, no, somebody came through with a scorpion. I’m like, oh, that’s interesting. She said, yeah, and it got out. And I’m like, oh, well, that’s really interesting. She goes, yeah, and it bit somebody. And I’m like, oh. And she goes, yeah, it was a woman. And the woman, once she got bit, she completely freaked out and passed out and fell down on the ground right there. And I’m like, oh. So processing gaming pages is way tamer than that. But anyway, I guess we’re TSA. You know, I get to the gate.

By the way, I purchased two seats, and then I purchased, for each seat, there’s an extra $150 each for the cat carriers for when you’re carrying your pets. So this is an expensive trip, right? Don’t get me wrong. And, you know, it’s a full pack, but I’m in row 28, and I have seat A and B, and I got my cat carriers shoved under the seats there. And we’re just kind of sitting there, minding our own business while the plane fills up, and I’m texting with, I’ve got a girlfriend who’s already started to drive from Rincon to meet me in San Juan to pick me up, and all the logistics of a trip.

So everybody’s seated in their seat belts on, and it looks like we’re ready to go, and a gate agent comes up to me in my row, and she says, hi. You’re the one with the two cat carriers? And I said, yep, absolutely. And she goes, I said, what kind of help you with? And she goes, well, we’re going to have to ask you to leave this flight. And I’m like, why? And she goes, well, it’s only you and the two cat carriers. And I said, yep, that’s right. And she goes, well, we have a company policy that if you have a cat carrier, it has to have a human being associated with it, another passenger associated with it.

And I said, well, I paid full passenger prices for all these seats in addition to the cat carrier costume. I mean, I’ve paid for all of this. It’s good. And she goes, no, no, no, it’s a policy that you have to have a human being there. And I said, look, this is like my third or fourth carrying livestock like this. You know, I have not ever run into this problem. I don’t ever remember seeing this policy or whatever. And she goes, well, it is a policy. And she goes, what we can do is we can put you on another flight later on.

And I’m like, what do you mean later on? Because in about three hours, we have another flight going from Fort Lauderdale to San Juan. And I’m like, you’re telling me you want me to get off of this airplane, and I’ll go onto another airplane with my two cat carriers, full of guinea pigs, and I will fly to San Juan on this exact same airline, but on a different flight. Hello, you guys. Quit making a mess. I’ll splash me. And she goes, yeah. And I said, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

I’m not doing that. I’m like, I’m not getting off this flight. And she goes, well, I said, that doesn’t make any sense. She said, well, this flight crew is very, very, very stickler for the rules. And I thought, oh, yeah, there’s somebody here who’s a control freak. And I don’t know what I could have possibly done. Like, why? Somebody was really, really having a bad day or something. I don’t know. You know, probably the lead. Let’s do this. Whatever. Anyway, she said, well, I said, I’m not doing that. So she goes, well, I have one other option.

I’m like, OK. What’s the other option? She said, you can take all of the guinea pigs out of one and consolidate it into one hatch area that’s under your seat, and that will meet regulations. And I’m like, OK, let’s do that, right? So I’m, you know, doubled over, moving guinea pigs from one to the other, and they’re watching very closely to make sure I get all of them out. And about halfway through this procedure, I’m remembering why we had all the boys in one and the girls in the other.

My breeding program has officially begun. Oh, yeah. And so they were satisfied with that. Meanwhile, we’ve got these cavies. We’re just going berserk in there. There’s fights. There’s an orgy. It’s like it’s crazy. There’s all kinds of cavey screeches and whatever, noises, and all the passengers around. We’re going, oh, yeah, they’re fighting. This doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, the gate agent leaves. They close the gate. We taxi and take off. And then as soon as we do that, I put a bunch of them back in the other carrier just for the space. I don’t let them get too hot and crowded, and I don’t really know how to sex guinea pigs.

That, you know, doubled over underneath an airplane seat. So I’m just separating them so that they can… Oh, my goodness. So we had an orgy on row 28 under seat A and B. And, yeah, and I have no idea who’s bred, who isn’t bred. And the one big… And I got to tell you, guinea pigs, they, male guinea pigs, like they are serious about their genetic disbursement. I mean, they get on it. Like, I mean, they get on it. And that one bigger male from the pet supermarket, he actually ended up dying.

He imagined he’d put him in there with all these 11 girls. He just went at it and went at it and went at it. And I’m pretty sure he just over-eat it and died. I didn’t find him until I actually landed in San Juan. But actually, I lost two guinea pigs in that. So I arrived at 20. Anyway, yep. So I have no idea. It’ll be interesting to see. Most of these guys are only two months old, and that’s pretty cool. And I don’t know if all the girls were actually, you know, sexually viable or not.

I know that one male was, and I’m sure the other female from the pet mart was. And then I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. But it will be very interesting to see. They have a gestation period of about 75 days. And I’ve got a bit of a job. I still haven’t sorted them out. But I’ve got a bit of a job, and I’m going to be getting them all sorted out. And I have the plastic, and you know, the breeder did put ear tags in all of them, and I’ve got the records.

When you start your breeding program, there’s a software called Kintrex, K-I-N-T-R-A-C-K-S. They have a free version with up to like 100 animals, and then it’s like only $20 for the full version, which is lifetime. And it’s really just meant for people like you and me that are breeders, amateur breeders. So anyway, I’m starting to get a laptop up and going and filling out that database, I can now carefully track things. But life always has interesting surprises, doesn’t it? So one thing’s for sure, there’ll be some more genetic diversity.

Oh, well, this is Marjorie. Just thought you might enjoy that. And then this absolute adorable cuteness of these guys. Like, this is not my best camera ever. Hey, guys, you want to say hi? And I’ll get you some really good footage with my other camera once the battery charges up. Okay, have fun with that. Talk to you soon. [tr:trw].