The Original Guinea Pig

~ MaryG

My photo digitizing project continues…

Thanks to blogger Dwight Roth (a wonderful poet), I’ve learned that sometimes an iPhone photo of an old print is just as good or better than a “scan.”

Today’s discovery is Rainbow—the original guinea pig.

Rainbow was the first in a series of guinea pigs that my sister and I had as pets in the 70s. My main memories of the little fellows involve the absolute anguish we felt when they inevitably got sick and died. I can’t believe my mother spent good money taking them to see veterinarians when they stopped eating. (Maybe she lied about that and just drove around the block a few times.) I remember praying to God to save my guinea pigs. He never did.

In any case, I’ve learned that Rainbow was my class pet in kindergarten and I took him home for the summer.

I was happy to discover some good guinea pig memories in one of the old photo albums.

Good times in Kindergarten with two boys whose first and last names I still remember. (Yet, I can’t recall the name of a new person I met in church last week.)
I love how Rainbow got his own square in the class photo.
I was a wary little kindergartener. Thank goodness Rainbow didn’t die on my watch.
We hosted a neighborhood party for our guinea pig “Cookie” and another guinea pig in the summer of 1973. It looks like they had a nice little feast.
A happy memory of “Candy” roaming free in our backyard in the summer of 1974. I remember the guinea pigs loved nibbling clover and were very cute doing so. 🐹

23 thoughts on “The Original Guinea Pig”

  1. Right there with you, Mary. Love it that Rainbow got his own photo space in the class pic. That shows some creativity on the part of someone! I too was a timid kindergartner, and first grader, second grader, and so on.

    i’m interested in your comments that an iphone picture of an old photo may be as good or better than a scan. Digitizing the 1000s of photos I have is definitely a task I want to make progress on.

    Great post!

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    1. Thank you Susan!! I was using the “PhotoScan by Google app” on my phone, which seems good if the picture is very clear to begin with, but iPhone cameras have improved to the point that if you can get a shot without glare, it gets the colors better. My feeling is that my descendants are never going to want to see thousands of my old photos, but they may want to see a few good ones, especially if there’s an accompanying description or anecdote. I’m going to pick and choose. I’m begging my parents to digitize rather than try to unload all those dusty albums on us. Nobody has the room to store them! Eventually they’ve got to get tossed.

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      1. this is so helpful. i have downloaded the app and can’t wait to try it. i remember how fun it was to look through the basket of photos on grandma’s bookshelf, but there couldn’t have been more than 100. i have 1000s and with digital photos, i don’t imagine my kids would want them. i can’t throw them away so digitizing seems like the best idea.

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      2. I also like to post a throwback photo every now and then on social media (Facebook and IG). I think the digital versions of our memories may be all that is left of us in 100 years. I figure we might as well tell some of our stories for posterity.

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  3. Those photos are priceless! B&W and the kindergarten class! We always wanted a guinea pig as a kid. I think my mom was too busy chasing four kids around to throw a pet into the mix. I don’t blame her! Glad you found a few photos of yours!

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      3. It actually was a little gamey. I wasn’t a big fan. The presentation didn’t help. It literally was a whole guinea pig on my plate from head to toe. My first thought was roasted road kill…

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  4. Lovely post. Thank you for sharing. Pets leave us such vivid memories! When I was about 6 years old, I had a turtle that disappeared one day, and I still remember looking for it under the bushes in my hometown in México.

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  5. Such fantastic photos. Real treasures!

    I had guinea pigs too, btw. I had two then one gave birth to 3 more on my birthday one year. I woke to them having been born it was this amazing Christmasy feeling. 🙂

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