Scaredy Pig

Yesterday morning, I came downstairs, singing Beorn’s good morning song. Yes, our pig gets a good morning song. I took away his sleeping space and set down his food bowl, as I do every morning, still singing the song, when he suddenly jumped forward, terrified, and hit the wall of his cage. I jumped back, terrified, and stopped singing.

Whenever I approached the cage, he would run frantically, bouncing off three walls, and scream.

I went to get Josh and thus began 12 hours of trying to calm down the pig. We missed services. We tried giving him his favourite foods. We tried taking away foods that seemed to make him more upset. We tried speaking to him in a quiet voice. We tried speaking to him in a normal voice. We tried to reason with him. We gave him back his sleeping space. He stood at attention for 12 hours, sniffing the air, his back hunched in fear, too afraid to move.

He was okay out of the cage, so we cleaned the cage. That helped in the sense that he would allow us to place things back in his cage, all cleaned. But he still seemed skittish. We gave him a bath, which helped more. He finally stopped freaking out and ate hay, watching us to see if we were judging him.

The most likely explanation is that guinea pigs will mark places they deem dangerous if they’re scared to let other pigs know that something scary is there. But it was like Beorn forgot HE was the pig who marked the space and spent the entire day worried about a danger that didn’t exist, which is super sad. But I’m glad he’s not running and screaming anymore.

He smells so good this morning because I used baby shampoo.