Honey is doing very well with the rest of the guinea pigs. I reset the pig pen with a freshly laundered liner and removed the fabric corner cave and replaced it with a plastic “pigloo”. I also removed the wooden house and replaced that with the large pigloo. Basically the point was to neutralize their surroundings and lower the amount of chaos that would come from a new guinea pig infringing on their space.

To lower the smells further, all guinea pigs were bathed.

There were scuffles.

No guinea pig ever expects to meet a hairless guinea pig. It’s really a very silly thing to them. They weed out weaknesses within the herd and missing your coat is one of them. Skeeter got scratched up a bit. Mu-Xi was followed around and screamed like a child having a tantrum *she’s shy*.
Chai held her ground and had a few fights with Honey.

At this point I felt bad as I realized that Chai is beginning to be too old for Thunderdome.
Instead of her relentlessly holding her ground, she took time outs and laid down for awhile.

Wouldn’t it be great if this year I had a seven-year-old guinea pig? (she’s six and 1/2)

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I feel like my writing it fairly disjointed lately.
I want to tell you a story.
A few years ago we decided to give the guinea pig one very large half of a cucumber. I didn’t cut it into pieces and there were at least four guinea pigs going after it. The guinea pig with the most touchdowns ended up being Chai. Ultimately she kept the rest of the guinea pigs off her long enough to finish the cucumber off. It wasn’t a battle. No one was hurt or even any teeth chattering. There was a lot of yoinking of the veggie from each other while we were laughing heartily.

Ever since I met Chai, she was the militant one. She always had patience and a plan. Even when you would try to catch her to clean the pen she would hold still and stare at you. She let you get all the way upon her and just when you thought you could pluck her up, she would stay so close to your hands but evade you. She was always the most difficult catch of (what was at the time) 9 guinea pigs.
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I feel guilty for taking in Honey just as I notice that Chai is not the guinea pig she once was. It’s been a few days and they are all doing fine now but I have this tiny little nag at the back of my mind hoping this doesn’t have any effect on Chai’s longevity.