Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

I just love Charlie Brooker’s column in The Guardian. His latest take on the media lists is spot on. And is so impressive, that it clearly lightened up my day when I was nailing together a bookshelf, just by wondering if it would make it into his list of “908 Items of Flat-Pack Furniture to Assemble Before You Die”.

Definitely, I would NOT put the ARGOS bookshelf into this list, but the small animal wooden log cabin should easily be able to make it into the Top Ten. Because the little hut is made of untreated wood for the guinea pigs to eat, consists just of 4 walls and a roof, and has got three windows and a door and has a beautiful rustic and simple architecture and looks pretty snug, too. Its so easy to assemble that nobody would ever need even instructions for use. With a price of only £10, any first-time buyer and property developper in Britain will be doomed to be jealous.

The bookshelf though was rather horrifying; I needed about a week to understand the instructions and another week to know how to put it together without following their obligatory legal disclaimer: “It would be useful to ask someone to help ou at this stage”. I really don’t like to nail the back on, which is just a sheet of formaldehyd-ified sheet of an unidentifyable mixture. And in the end I was mortified when I thought I had lost one of the little metal pins acting as shelf-supports, they should really have put in some more. But for a strange reason, there were several screws present which were not needed, as well as the plastic naiing precision tool was broken.

The last days I have tried to tidy up a little bit by optimistically getting rid of stuff I hope I won’t need anymore in future. But like everything, it has become more of an exchange of things rather than being able to get rid of stuff. Especially as I got two guinea pigs now, via freecycle. I originally wanted a non-barking dog, but then that offer came along and I thought I would try. The two are not that tame yet, but seem to be happy to listen to classical music and they are very shy and a bit overweight. Now, unfortunately with guinea pigs, there is no way that they could be made to diet, the only way would be more exercise, but that is very tricky as they are not yet tame, and less energy-rich food, and more hay, and securing all the electrical cables.
In fact, the worst thing you could do to a guinea pig is to make it starve, as it disrupts its darm flora and can kill it. In my pre-veterinary days, I have seen one guinea pig die because the family went on holidays for two weeks and did not organise any regular feeding of hay!!! Dogs and cats are less prone to irregular feeding as they are carnivores, so they are dependent on their hunting luck and nature doesn’t punish them if they are unsuccessfull, but all the grass eating animals can suffer from huuuge health problems if they are not feed hay ad libitum(as much as they want) and every day.

The only way guinea pigs can be made to loose weight is to cut out the commerical pet food, and just stick to hay and fresh fruit and veggies, and to give them a much, much bigger area to run around and maybe increasing the guinea pig herd.

The two guinea pigs are constantly squeeking, so had to evacuate Fluffy into my bedroom so he can sleep during daytime undisturbed. They are quite shy, but I got the guinea boar to eat some parsley out of my hand, they are like very messy vegetable and fruit vacuum cleaners, trying to eat nearly everything. Fluffy is much more tidy I have to say, with him peeing in only one corner and also keeping his food in a pile. Apart from that, though he is much smaller he is much more tame than the guineas, like he comes when called and never ever seems to be scared of me.