My Alarm Clock

Okay, so I realize that this may not seem post worthy but, I just have to tell you anyway.  I have a built in alarm clock (not in my head) but, in my house.  It doesn't require electricity or batteries.  It only requires water, bi-weekly cage cleanings and a bit of guinea pig food, actually a lot of guinea pig food.  His name is "Budgy" or "Fluffy" or "Bo" or whatever my six year old wants to call him on any given day. You see, technically, he's her pet. In fact each one of our three daughters has a guinea pig.  Santa brought them this last Christmas. My husband wasn't all that happy about it but, I was thrilled. It just so happens that I love almost anything with fur. So, way to go Santa!

This little guy though...he's amazing. You can seriously set your clock by him.  Every morning at 6:00am (if he is bored, it's 5:45am) he starts to squeak. It starts off slow and rather quiet.  I used to think that if I ignored him, he'd stop. Turns out that the slow and quiet squeaking is just his way of warming up. Once he gets the slow and quiet part out of the way, he goes to town and makes noises that are difficult to believe come out of an animal weighing in at (maybe) 1.5 lbs. He's on the entire other side of the house and I can't sleep through it.  It's like a flock of seagulls  flew in through the window (not the band but, an actual flock of seagulls-Little tip of the cap to the class of '88).

The funny thing is, I'm the only one that hears these incredibly loud sounds.  The girls don't budge.  My husband, on the other hand, is already up by this hour on most days. But, he has this strange ability to completely block it out.  He just goes about his business making coffe or whatever, with a guinea pig down the hall squealing as though he's being attacked. This is probably why my (many) requests for guinea pig quarters were met with a smirk followed by him saying, "You helped them write the letters to Santa". It just doesn't bother him and, why should it, when a crazy lady is running around looking for the guinea pig food she misplaced?

When all of this started (shortly after Christmas), I thought I would train him to stop.   I tried feeding him at different times and giving him so much food there would be a constant supply thus, no need to squeak at me.  Well, regardless of how much food I put in his cage, it always seemed to be gone by the next morning (guess that's where the "pig" part of their name comes from) and, as far as timing the feedings differently, this just seemed to confuse him and created a situation where the squeaking took place all hours of the day.

So, now this just seems to work best.  We are both convinced that each of us trained the other one.  He thinks he squeaks at me and I hop up and feed him, which is exactly what happens.  But, I like to think that I have this great alarm clock who wakes me, without fail, every morning at 6:00am because that's when I choose to feed him. It's a symbiotic thing. Although, I'm not really sure what's symbiotic about a guinea pig dictating the time of day that I wake up but, I'm just going with that for now.

Here's another view, just in case you didn't get a good look before (you're looking at his nose here).  One more thing,  he's not nearly this cute at 5:45am. But all things considered, I'm still pretty crazy about this little guy, my daughter's guinea pig, that is.