Howdy!
It’s time for chapter two. 📚
If you missed the first chapter, you can read it here:
Without further ado!
Dear reader, when you think of a guinea pig, you will probably picture a cute fuzzy ball of fur relaxing in its decorated little home within a human house. They are probably munching on a stick of carrot or celery or a leaf of lettuce. They may even be going for a light jog on their hamster wheel (guinea pigs loathe that the wheel was named after hamsters instead of them). More likely than not, in reality, they would be fast asleep, snoring gently with a full belly.
Alas, this is not the way of life for all guinea pigs. Some don’t have a hamster wheel for them to run on. Instead, they have to run for real. Perhaps being chased. Perhaps the one chasing.
Ginny the guinea pig was one such guinea pig. No wheel to run on, no pre-chopped carrots for dinner, no decorated cage to keep her safe. She was a guinea pig of the wild. The world was her cage, the earth was her wheel.
It wasn’t all bad. For one, she didn’t even fully know what she was missing out on. There were rumours and stories of how some guinea pigs lived, but she had never seen any actual proof of it.
Plus, life wasn’t all bad. She had a good family. A big family. And she usually managed to scrounge up the food she needed to get by. Most of her family actually thought they had great lives. For them, their most important box was ticked: having a tight and caring community to be a part of. And that was exactly why Ginny couldn’t help but sometimes feel like an outsider.
Sure, Ginny loved her friends and family. But she also loved adventure. She loved exploring and trying new things. Unfortunately for her, most guinea pigs didn’t feel that way.
One unusual thing that Ginny did was going out foraging all on her own. While most guinea pigs foraged in packs, Ginny liked to venture alone. It was her chance to feel a little adventure and to get some space.
On this particular day in question, Ginny was sniffing around the forest floor for a much-needed bite to eat. She had been searching all afternoon and now it was starting to get dark. As was often the case, she wasn’t having much luck.
Drifting farther and farther from home, the moon now out, she finally found something that transformed her mood — a mango!
She approached the mango with slight caution, not wanting to get her hopes up too much. A big fruit like a mango was a rare treat for Ginny, and, usually, most forest floor fruit like that was rotten or nasty. But maybe, just maybe, today’s mango would be different.
She approached it with a sniff. Quickly, her shoulders dropped. Another rotten piece of fruit…
She looked up and saw the actual fresh mangoes high up above, still attached to the tree, taunting her. She would give anything to be able to get up there.
That’s when poor old Bruce the fruit bat came crashing through the air like a earth-bound shooting star…