Guinea Pigs Become An Online Attraction Web Sites Provide Advice For Breeding, Birthing Critters

Furry little potatoes with ears and Web sites all their own.

From Yakima to the United Kingdom to Australia, people are going online to chat about a little South American critter that is making a second migration around the world.

There’s Matt in Australia, Lynne in England and Cyndy in Yakima.

With the help of others, such as Carlo Ferrari in Italy, these and other owners of cavies, or guinea pigs, are reaching out to each other to share an animal originally domesticated by the Inca Indians of Peru and brought to Europe by Dutch traders.

Guinea pigs - actually not pigs, but as much a rodent as are rats - came to the home of Cyndy and Keith Nelson via their daughter Kayla’s kindergarten classroom.

Kayla’s heart caved in to cavies.

“It evolved. It needed a friend. It needed to have babies,” said Cyndy, describing how her daughter’s fondness for the little critters grew.

But the girl’s mother also was soon taken by the animals’ cuddly and furry demeanor and their affectionate, squeaky purr.

“They look like potatoes with ears,” she said.

Her husband, Keith, attests with a rolling of the eyes to the attention heaped upon the nine guinea pigs that now inhabit the family home’s basement.

When not busy serving as Parent/Teacher Association president, Cyndy surfs the Internet to improve her knowledge and to cyberswap tales of guinea pig delights.

Ferrari set up the “Guinea Pig Daily Digest” Website about 2 years ago, and the American Cavy Breeders Association followed with a site of its own. A Digest chat line specifically for guinea pig owners also is available.

“People from all over the world are on it,” Cyndy Nelson said, citing a list of cavy cyberfriends, some of whom Nelson knows only by their first names: Matt from Australia, Lynne in England and Penny in upstate New York.

Closer to home, she often chats with Margaret Wells in Longview and Terri Torpin in Snohomish. The exchanges often focus on the mundane - the latest in guinea pig health care or cuisine - but they sometimes involve drama as well.

Last month, Cyndy Nelson happened upon an actual online delivery of baby guinea pigs. Wells responded to cries of help from one of two girls who began to panic as their animal struggled to give birth.

“She just popped in (on the chat line): ‘I need help! Is anyone there?”’ Cyndy Nelson said. “I just happened to get online at the same time.”

At her keyboard in Longview, Wells calmly instructed the girls to insert a finger inside the mother, feel for the front teeth of the babies, hook a finger under them and gently pull, Cyndy Nelson said.

“(Wells) helped her deliver her babies,” she said.

Only the hardest of souls could turn away from a newly born guinea pig, which pops out fully equipped for the outside world.

“They aren’t those hairless, ugly things like hamsters,” Cyndy Nelson said.

Kayla, now in the second grade, named each of here animals. Except for “Big Jake,” “Tom and Jerry” and “Chipmunk,” most names are food-related.

“I don’t understand why, because she doesn’t like to eat,” Cyndy said of her daughter.

Most of the Nelsons’ animals are white with pink eyes. One, a male, attained grand champion status at one show, Cyndy Nelson said.

Keith Nelson facetiously complains about veterinarian and food bills and the pending bankruptcy.

“He always says (if we go broke) we could go live in a tent and eat the guinea pigs,” Cyndy Nelson said.

“I might have said that in one of my weaker moments,” her husband confirmed.

By the way, guinea pigs, which have been hunted or raised for food in South America for hundreds of years, are low in fat.

“I’ve never sampled one yet,” Keith said. “I think I’d be out in the doghouse if I told my wife I had guinea-pig shish kebab for lunch.”