Peanut and Polly

      

         Last April, my family purchased a mother-daughter pair of skinny pigs from a guinea pig shelter in Indianapolis. I’d heard of many people buying pets during the pandemic, and after months of slipping frequent reminders into conversations with my parents, they finally relented. I’d had both guinea and skinny pigs before, but they were always family pets, and I had never had a pet that was specifically mine, so I was even more excited this time around. Skinny pigs are basically furless guinea pigs except for a small patch of fur on their noses, and since they don’t have much fur, they’re hypoallergenic, so my dad and brothers can be around them. The word “skinny” is a play on words to describe their absence of fur, and definitely doesn’t describe their plump bodies.

On Guinea Pig Finder, the website where my mom found them, they were listed as Abby and Harriet, which are (in my opinion) terrible names for such tiny and cute pets. My sister and I renamed them to be Peanut and Polly since guinea/skinny pigs aren’t smart enough to learn their names (they just listen to the tone of your voice). Peanut is a chocolate brown skinny pig with orange nose fur and Polly is a pink dalmatian skinny pig with brown spots.

Although I love both of them, Peanut’s probably my favorite because of her personality. Polly is an extremely cranky grandma who always has to have everything exactly her way. Peanut, on the other hand, is adorably chubby and hates exercise. Skinny pigs in general aren’t especially bright, but Peanut is endearingly dumb. They have two cages, one for night, and a bigger one for them to run around in during the day. Polly always takes advantage of her space to sprint laps around her exercise pen. Peanut, however, typically plops herself down (usually in her mom’s way) and munches on hay the entire time. In one rare case Peanut and Polly both decided to sprint around together (https://youtu.be/Gz841ARv33A). 

One peculiar habit Peanut has is standing on her hind legs (something most guinea/skinny pigs are able to do, but since Peanut and Polly are older, it’s a little riskier). Once Peanut found out we didn’t want her to stand on her hind legs for too long in case she lost her balance and fell over, she began doing that every time we were too slow to give her breakfast and it turned into a trick she likes doing. Since Polly’s older than Peanut, she has a modified version of Peanut’s trick and puts her paws on my hands to reach for her food. Peanut also likes an extra challenge of hopping over my leg when she has time to play on the floor. 

Listing all of Peanut’s dislikes is easy, because aside from loud noises and the cold, there’s nothing else that seems to bother her; her favorite pastime is eating all day long, and she’s especially fond of fruits like bananas, oranges, and watermelon. While Polly also enjoys fruit, she actually seems to like her pellets as much as fresh food. But Polly is not nearly as mild-mannered as her daughter, and dislikes so many things, it would be impossible to write them all down. If you pick her up wrong, touch her with cold hands, give her healthier (but less tasty) pellets, try to pet her nose, or move her house somewhere she doesn’t want it to be (just to name a few), she’ll look directly into your eyes and make a “mad noise.” I don’t know if there’s a more specific name for it, but their mad noise is a sound guinea pigs make by chattering their teeth to let you know you’re doing something wrong. I could probably count the number of times Peanut’s done this to me on one hand, but Polly chatters at me like this at least five times a day.

One of Peanut’s cutest characteristics is her innocence. She’ll steal a piece of lettuce from her mom, sometimes having to play tug-of-war to get to it, and then happily munch on it a few seconds later. Whenever she catches me watching her, she looks at me with wide open I-didn’t-do-anything-wrong-I’m-being-cute eyes and keeps eating. Polly tries to keep some kind of order in their cage and bosses her daughter around which is funnier than it should be to me because Polly’s tiny compared to her enormous daughter. Despite their sometimes conflicting personalities, they always snuggle up to sleep and immediately look for each other if they’re scared of anything. I can’t even remember what my house was like before we got Polly and Peanut, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with them this winter.