Belka and Truffle turn one!

Truffle blowing out the candle

Belka and Truffle turn one this month! Of course, nobody knows their actual birthday, but our humans estimated that it is sometime in July. Belka and Truffle are sisters from the same litter. Judging by Truffle's size,  which is a lot smaller than Belka, whee guessed that she is the younger of the two. However, you certainly wouldn't be able to tell by her attitude - although she's the smallest, she makes up for it with her bite. Often, just a glare from her is enough to send the much larger Peaches and Belka running for cover. Or downstairs, whichever is closer. But whee digress.


Anyways, Belka and Truffle got to have their own special piggy party with lots of wheatgrass and the wearing of celebratory headgear! Happy first birthday Belka and Truffle!

Wheeks, from the non-birthday piggies

"Can you tell we're sisters?"

Nom nom nom

Sibling squabbling

"But... but.... it's my birthday too!"

"...but this is a satisfactory consolation prize."

Piggy Pics of the Day: Poker for Parsley

Poof deciding which cards to keep

While our humans were away, whee guinea pigs decided to have a few games of piggy poker using our new deck of piggy playing cards. Instead of poker chips and money, whee played using more important currency - FOOD! Here are a few pigtures of our Poker for Parsley night.

Peaches the dealer prepares the deck - she shuffles by sitting on the cards and  popcorning

Truffle was the Purveyor of Parsley, protecting the loot

Belka puts on her thinking cap

Revy decides to raise

Belka's bluffing face - cute, no?

Poof opts to leave the table while she's ahead

Truffle takes her cut of the winnings

Whee are not sure who really won, but for some reason, whee think it was Truffle...

Guinea Pig Playing Cards!

Peaches strikes a pose next to one of her playing cards

For today, whee are presenting our very own, special, personalized guinea pig playing cards featuring yours truly, the piggies of the Cali Cavy Collective!

How did this come about, you may ask? Well, as the story goes, a few weeks ago our humans were playing cards next to us while whee were going about our lawn mowing duties. Coppy happened to wander by them and took a look at what they were playing with, which was a boring standard deck of cards. So whee decided to personalize our own deck of cards, featuring pictures of our herd. That way, our slaves can think of us whenever they play cards, even if whee are happily sleeping in another room!

Whee were also hoping that when playing, they would see our pigtures and admire our cuteness, which would hopefully have the desired effect of making them want to feed us veggie treats. But that is something for another day. Enlarge the pigtures to see everything up close! Personally, whee think our cards turned out pretty well (although the same cannot necessarily be said for these pigtures, so give us a wheek if you want better closeups!).

One of Morry's kings next to the back of our deck. Can you guess who is featured on the back?

Sharky's aces

King Morry-mor

Queen Coppy

Jacks, featuring the king and queen, truly best friends forever

Poof pokes her head around to see her likenesses 

Revy tries to mimic her modeling poses

An uncharacteristically shy Peaches wonders why she is on all the "Wanted" posters

Belka admires all the pretty peegs

Truffle waits expectantly for a treat

Peaches' Army

A selection of colorful group closeups

Herd lineups

The triumphant trio

Cinnamon and Caramel, our humans first two peegs

Meet the Piggies: Revy

Name: Revy, short for Revy the Pirate. Nicknamed "Panda"

Age: estimated 1 year

Weight: 1153 grams/ 2lbs, 8.7 oz

Description: black and white Abyssinian with a white eyepatch, white patches along her left side, and white-socked paws

Favorite foods: grass, red lettuce, romaine lettuce, carrots, tomato, dark green corn leaves, radicchio, celery leaves, dandelion greens 

Favorite activities: exploring uncharted territory, rearranging the furniture in her home, testing everything with her teeth, flipping her hay tub, moving her pigloo, running laps, making magical bean sculptures. 

Story: Like Poof, Revy's origins are unknown - she was found wandering in an alley near Venice Beach, California. She was taken in by Orange County Cavy Haven, our favorite rescue organization, until our humans adopted her several weeks ago (they drove eight hours each way to pick her up!). She was given the name "Revy the Pirate" by her kind and caring foster mom, who thought the name fit because of her white eyepatch and spunky personality.

After living near Revy for the past few weeks, whee all have to agree that she is definitely an Abyssinian With Attitude - she has quite a strong personality and a very loud wheek! (Seriously, whee were scared poop-less the first few times.) You can see this by the way she rearranges the furniture in her home - she redecorates every day after the slaves clean our cage by flipping her hay tub, pushing her food bowl around, and relocating her pigloo to exactly where she wants it. For example, if she is feeling lazy, she will position her pigloo right next to the hay so less walking is involved. Revy also decorates by making poop sculptures - just yesterday she made an entire poop pyramid! She's quite the artist and whee were very impressed!

And that concludes our Meet the Piggies profile for Revy! If you want to get to know the rest of us, read the rest of our Meet the Piggies profiles here.

Piggy Pics of the Day: Portrait of a Peruvian

Peaches here, presenting Morry, our herd's only boar, and only Peruvian! A Peruvian is one of those long-haired breeds, Morry's fur grows pretty quickly so our slaves need to give him trims regularly. Morry's fur parts in the middle straight down his back, and when left to its own devices, grows forward over his nose in front.

However, our slaves noticed that he prefers his fur shorter because he keeps shaking it away from his face when its longer, so they keep it clipped short for him. They also make sure to keep the fur near his rear short so things won't get too messy back there. Since I am a short-haired American, I am always sort of jealous because he has such long, lustrous locks while I just have this short fuzz. But, at least I can take consolation in the fact that because I'm short-haired, the slaves can't style my fur into something resembling a lion's mane! *giggles

Wheeks, Peaches

Piggy Pics of the Day: Peaches' Army

Peaches' Army readies to conquer

A short comic strip featuring Peaches' piggy army! General Peaches assembled a small unit to conquer a neighboring patch of grass, but couldn't quite manage to keep her overeager troops in line...

Squabbling breaks out amongst the troops

"Settle down now, back in formation!"

"Left paw, right paw, left!"

But Revy breaks rank to claim more of the communal corn husk rations -

A tug-of-war tussle ensues among the troops

General Peaches finally surrenders to insubordination

Shaking our fur dry

To conclude our segment on the abomination that humans refer to as "bath time", here are two short video clips of Morry and Coppy being blow dried at the "Piggy Spa". They are clearly still damp and spiky-furred from the bath... *durrs in disapproval


Oddly enough, even though Morry is a long-haired Peruvian, and therefore has much more fur, he takes less time to dry than the Americans do (Belka, Peaches and Truffle). Perhaps that is because he keeps trying to shake his fur dry in between mad bouts of grooming his facial fur. Our slaves always think he looks really cute when he does this, sort of like a bicolored mop.

Like Morry, Coppy is also trying to groom herself after the bath mussed her fur. She rears up on her hind legs to shake herself dry, sort of like a horse. Speaking of which, our vet once said that piggies smell like horses because of the hay that we both eat. Since whee have never owned a horse before, and neither have our slaves, we can't verify if this is true or not. But since our vet owns both horses and piggies, we shall take her word for it. Wheek, baths and vets! *runs off to hide in a pigloo

Helping Our Animal Friends Beat the Heat

One of my favorite "ism's" is the one that says: be careful what you wish for. Somewhere around January 18th when the thermometer was coming perilously close to twenty below, I'll bet I wasn't the only Wisconsinite who was wishing for the heat of summer. Extreme temperatures such as the heat wave we are currently experiencing offer the challenge of keeping our animal residents safe during oppressive heat wave. Like zoos around the world, Wildwood is using a variety of methods to help beat the heat.

The Zookeepers at Wildwood Wildlife Park have been preparing cold treats to help the animals cool down in the hot weather. They offer the perfect cool treat that also provides an enrichment activity.

To help prevent heat illness the animals are given daily treats: the otters are given frozen fish lollies while the lemurs and coatimundi are given ice lollies made from frozen fruit and juice.  Other animals such as the capybara, otters, beavers, and tigers keep cool by swimming in their pools, streams offer other animals a chance to splash in the water. The water helps cool them off and the animals can be seen going in and out of the water quite a few times throughout the day.

All the animals have shady spots around their enclosures including shade cloth tops. The zoo incorporates fans, spray misters and sprinklers to help the animals keep cool in extreme weather conditions as well as providing a shady place to rest.

Many of the zoo animals are enjoying the heat wave including the lemurs who can be seen sitting up on their hind legs, with their arms splayed out. Our giant tortoise has been hanging out in the paddock, soaking up the sun and munching on the grass but the Zoo Keepers still have taken measures to keep them comfortable and keep a close watch on all the animals.

Piggy Pics of the Day: Being blow dried at the spa

A very disgruntled Truffle

Of course, since we piggies are not self-drying creatures, after every bath comes something equally as trying - blow drying! Our slaves try to fool us by telling us that whee are getting a complimentary blow drying after our shampoo fur treatment at the "piggy spa", but we know better. The phrase "Piggy Spa" is to be dreaded, such as in the case of "manicures" and "pedicures", which is really just their code word for nail trimming. WhEEK!


What they are actually trying to do is ensure that whee end up with soft, shiny, pettable fur. Or style us so we end up looking ridiculous, like long-haired Morry the Peruvian. He always ends up looking like he has a lion's mane around his head. He insists it is not as funny as it sounds.

While some piggies may not mind baths, so far absolutely none of us has ever enjoyed being blow dried. That  hair dryer is the devil! *DURR durr durr

Bleary-eyed Cinnamon

Squinting Caramel

Slighty damp Sharky: "I've been abused!"

Morry, pre lion mane

Coppy being toweled off: "How could you do this to me?!"

Poof bracing herself against the offensive onslaught of the dryer

An extremely offended, spiky, porcupine-like Belka

Peaches wrapped up like a burrito = Peachrrito?

Revy plotting an escape route from the dreaded dryer