Adoption News - - It's a Guinea Pig!!

There's absolutely NOTHING happening on the adoption front, so this will have to do for now...
Yep, we've added another member to our family! Her name is Gingersnap. Our animal lover, Sarah Jane, told us the only thing she wanted for her 10th birthday was a pet. Knowing how responsible she is, we started the conversation months ago and began researching different pet options....

• Gecko or some other lizard - - uh, no to anything that requires live crickets!
• Turtle or Frog - - Too smelly
• Ferret - - too big, too expensive, too creepy
• Dog - - one word: MAX

We found that Guinea Pigs are very social, like interaction with owners, eat Timothy Hay, Guinea Pig pellets, and fresh fruits and veggies (found a good use for the occasional tomatoes people give us!).

Biggest problem so far: we got a plain, wire cage....not thinking about the bedding that would fly everywhere when Ginger gets scared or excited. Our first solution was to make a cardboard wall around the bottom of the cage. Helped quite a bit, but we still sweep up bedding 2-3 times/day. Our next solution is that we're going to switch to fleece as bedding. I'm making kind of a pillowcase out of fleece, and we're cutting up an old mattress pad to put inside of it. Then, we can just vacuum up Ginger's poop (and, did you know you can potty train Guinea pigs?!) and throw the whole bed into the washing machine every few days! I'll post a picture when we get it done and let you know if it actually works!