“Cool Papa. Sherlock won’t stop squeaking. What should I do?” I shook off my nighttime drowse, sat up in the pull-out bed, focused bleary eyes on my grandson. I tried to remember a conversation with my daughter about what her rat — excuse me, guinea pig — ate. “He’s had a lot of carrots already; what else can do you have?” Xavion said that we had spinach and the beast — excuse me, guinea pig — could eat that. Apparently that culinary decision did the trick as my grandson was able to quiet the squeaker at the foot of his bed.
Parents become heroes to their children when animals are introduced to the household, and the chunky floor-scrabbler — excuse me, guinea pig — that my daughter brought home to her 8-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son was a replacement for an animal of the same type from a few years back that had not managed to survive a diet of Gummie Worms (parents, make note). So, on my granddaughter’s birthday, September 10th, the creature — excuse me, guinea pig — came home to her house. My grandson named it Sherlock — “its coat reminded me of Sherlock Holmes” — and it was a full six days before my daughter called me in on a mission of mercy.
My granddaughter liked to carry the varmint — excuse me, guinea pig — around and place it on various floor surfaces to watch it cower. Well, maybe not cower … but anyway, on the fifth day, the pig plowed across the kitchen floor and disappeared into a hole under the dishwasher. Panic, followed by tears and snot, were the order of the rest of the day. “Dad,” Lisa asked, “what’s the best way to get a guinea pig to come out of a hole?” I suggested to my daughter that she place the critter’s cage (I know, excuse me), filled with delectables, on the floor in front of the hole and watch and wait for it to come out to feed. This advice proved difficult to follow for working parents and school-aged children, so Sherlock was chilling under the cabinets from 8:00 p.m. on September 15th to 3:30 p.m. on September 16th.
He was not alone, for mom, after her tearful and fearful children were in bed, set up sentry duty in front of the hole, shining lights inside as she let her own tears and snot flow. “I could see him,” my daughter told me later, “because he would come to the opening and look at me, but I couldn’t coax him out.” Lisa spent all night prone on the kitchen floor, her smartphone aimed at the hidey-hole, broadcasting audio of guinea pig calls to the escapee; she “called off” her job for the next day. We do what we must, don’t we?
Today, if you spread a blanket on a laminated wood floor and place Sherlock in the middle of it, he will crouch there, wary of hawks overhead until something he can hide in is added to the landscape. That is often my grandson’s T-shirt, or pant leg. Imani frequently takes it (“It’s a ‘he’ Cool Papa”) out of his villa, carrying him on her shoulder and depositing him on someone else’s. “He’ll pee on you,” she’ll say to me, and giggle. I do not giggle in reply. All of this current joy emanates from that moment on September 16th, when my grandson came home from school at 3:30 and asked his exhausted mother, “Have you seen Sherlock?” After hearing her negative reply, Xavion slumped and looked longingly into the cage. “MOM! He’s in the cage!”
“Sherlock. Sherlock Pig,” he nibbled.