It was way back as a kid while coming back from school everyday, there was this old man by the side of the pavement in dhothi, kurta who used to sell guinea pigs and white mice in four cages. Two for the guinea pigs and two for the mice. He used to be well dressed and his dhothi kurta would always be in spotless white. I still can remember his broad face and his big round nostril. Passing by him daily my brother would start his pleas for buying him g’pig for keeping as pet and the reply as usual would be the same-The loudest possible NO.That poor old man used to get cursed a lot for sitting by that pavement and luring my brother.

The war for bringing the g’pigs went on for months so far I can remember. At last my parents gave in to his never ending cries and two of them were purchased .My God! What a day it was!! His joy knew no bounds. I was quite small at that time and curiously watched him put them into a big brown cardboard box (similar to the ones in which T.V etc remain packed).Placing some lettuce leaves for them to eat.

The g’pigs like rabbits are very timid.They were quite shocked to be placed in the new environment far away from their old master. One was full white with black and brown patches and we named them Berry and the other was full white with only brown patches and it was christened Cherry. Berry male and Cherry female, that’s what I was told then. Of course both were like soft colored cotton balls.

The next morning they woke us all up with their characteristic sound which goes like “kuyee ,kuyee”.This added to the irritation of my parents who did not like those poor little creatures right from the start. On going up to see what made them squeak we found that the box was filled with small balls of their excreta and the greens were finished and they wanted more. More comments followed on the smell, the noise they made but my brother cared the least…

Weeks passed and it turned to months and slowly even my parents got used to their noise and stuff and in fact started liking them…One fine evening Cherry started to have kind of diarrhea and somehow passed away by next morning quite unexpectedly. The grief was evident on Berry’s face and for days without his partner the discomfort became more and more distinct.

And lo! The permission was granted to bring in a friend for Berry and in came to our house a older male Terry. Berry and Terry became friends in no time and this gave us a lot of relief.

To cut a long story short, we had both for two months or so but constant threat from our pet cat (that would take one more page of narration) which had an eye to pounce on them and devour them made us or rather forced us to donate them to a nearby park which housed a lot of these sweet little creatures.

After they were given away there was this vacuum which we all felt…Once I had gone to see how they are doing and both Berry and Terry were doing fine in fact much happier since they found their fellow brothers and sisters in large numbers and were quite satisfied. They didn’t recognize us though….But kind of came close to us when we handed them the grass feed….

So there ends one of my fond memories of my animals friends!!