Christmas morning, I lined up with my brothers, shortest to tallest, as always, which at that point, still meant I was in the back, to walk into the living room. I was so excited, so hopeful. We could hear the fire crackling and the tree lights were shining brightly across the room.
And then I saw the cage and ran over to find. . . a big, black. . . thing. I wasn't sure what it was, but I did know it wasn't like any hamster I'd seen or read about.
Turned out, it was a guinea pig, a species of animal which I'd never heard of. A full grown female guinea pig, who would expand to the size of a dinner plate a couple months later when she was pregnant. At the pet shop, the employee had convinced my parents that guinea pigs made much better pets than hamsters and that they should buy those for us rather than the latter.
I'll admit, I felt a lot of disappointment at that moment when I first looked in that cage and wasn't sure what I was even seeing. I tried to hide it because I didn't want to seem ungrateful, but I did quietly wish my parents had read my list a little more carefully.
But it was certainly a case of my parents knowing best. That guinea pig, Sonja, was so much fun. She was awake during the day, first of all, which goes a long way towards making a good pet for an 8 year old. She was noisy and responded to the rustlings of produce bags in the kitchen with fervent demands that we share the goodies with her.
And her babies--those sweet little fluff balls that looked exactly like miniature adult guinea pigs, with hair and their eyes wide open, instead of the typical blind, bald rodent baby--they more than made up for the hamster.
We had guinea pigs, and guinea pig babies, for several years after that and I'm excited now to carry on the experience with my own kids. And to think that it all started with unwelcome Christmas surprise.
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