Brought Back To Mind By The Title Of A Recent Post:
I Bring
You "The Saga Of Geoff The Guinea Pig".
Enjoy.
A while ago, I went through a spate of having some very...odd dreams.
Not so much whacky and so completely, completely unrealistic that it can't be
anything BUT a dream, but stupidly unlikely while (at the time, anyway) rather
plausible scenarios involving me, my family and my friends. Each and every one
of them was funny, in their own way, and had me shaking my head and smiling
when I woke up. But…BUT, my friends: not one of them was quite as funny and
head-shakeable as the Saga of Geoff the Guinea-Pig. And it is that the dream
that I am going to relate to you now.
The dream began normally enough. It began with me waking up after a
night’s sleep (you know, as you do), and taking Bingo for his morning walk.
It was a beautiful morning. We pottered along, Bingo sniffed about and
exchanged the usual doggy greetings with friends we met in passing, and then,
as always, when fellow dog walker and morning walk companion Jan arrived, we started off on our daily ramble
across the playing fields. All very regular and above board in the normality
stakes.
It was when we were joined by Margaret and her dog Rosie that things
began to take a bit of an odd turn. Margaret and Rosie joining us was not an
unusual incident in itself of course, as they often did join us. But today,
Margaret had a problem. Geoff: her Guinea-Pig. He had escaped, and was
currently racing about by the canal, sporting a minor injury to his rump -
caused by the brambles that he scrambled through whilst making his escape -
and, she wondered, would we be able to try and help her catch him…?
We looked at one another and shrugged. Fair enough. Damsel and
Guinea-Pig in distress: why not? And off we went, dogs following, down towards
the canal. Sure enough, there he was. He was dashing up and down between two
rotting tree stumps, trailing a little droplets of blood from the little
scratch just above his bum, and looking very lost, and frightened, and,
very...Guinea-Pig like. Right. So this was Geoff. All well and good so
far…
We made our way as quietly as we could (considering that we were
accompanied by four excited dogs) and, without speaking to one another, decided
unanimously to divide and conquer; walking slowly and calmly until we had the
little fuzz ball surrounded. This accomplished, we began to edge our way
forward, bit by bit, inch by inch, till we were very close indeed. Close enough
for one of us to grab him, but who would it be?
Before anybody could volunteer to take a shot at being The Guinea-Pig
Grabber, however, Geoff took matters into his own hands and made a dash: straight
between Jan's legs and into the canal. And it was right at that second that a
question I had asked myself once long ago was answered. The question was; could
Guinea-Pigs swim? The answer: no…no; they really couldn't, not at all.
So there we all were, with little Geoff drowning right before our eyes.
Something had to be done. And t'was I, apparently, that decided to be the one
to do it.
So in I jumped.
The rescue was brief and uneventful, or at least I presume so. One
second I was jumping in, next I was standing on the bank again, dripping, and
holding a (dripping) and considerably annoyed and belligerent Geoff in my arms.
Margaret noted, in some distress, that he was still bleeding, but that
was no problem at all. Alice, The Great Guinea-Pig Saviour, to the rescue!
Kneeling down, I produced from my dog walking bag my Black Pencil Case,
which, in turn, produced a collective sigh of relief from everyone in our
little group (except Geoff, who was too bust squealing his little head off and
wriggling). My Great Black Pencil Case, you see, was legendary.
As well as my inhalers, it was known to contain all manner of wondrous
and useful things: scissors, plasters, painkillers, stamps...and in this
instance I also (miraculously) had a sterile bandage (that was also
miraculously the correct size) and a safety pin.
Injured Guine-Pig's rump, plus bandage, plus safety pin, equalled me
endeavouring to bandage said injured Guinea-Pig's rump. Easier said than done
when said Guinea-Pig was decidedly against the idea of having his rump
bandaged, especially when said Guinea-Pig was dripping wet. I managed quite
well, though, until just as I was about to snip off the excess (and was already
congratulating myself on a job well done), Geoff made another break for it.
This time, thankfully, he did not jump into the canal. He instead led
every single person into the undignified position of scrambling on their hands
and knees as he waddled his way between every last set of legs he could find.
And quite a sight it was, I can tell you. Three ladies (and two men. God knew
who they were or where they had come from), one dripping wet, all scrabbling
about with their bottoms in the air trying desperately to grab hold of one very
annoyed and very very mischievous Guinea-Pig. And not one of us caught him.
Away he waddled, this time trailing a few inches of clean white bandage rather
than blood, which made him look even more out of place and conspicuous than he
had done before. And then, right before our very (astounded) eyes, the little blighter
waddled his way straight up a tree.
We spent a few minutes stood stock still,
blinking up at him (with him stood stock still on a branch, blinking down at
us), before Margaret had the idea of phoning her husband Brian to bring a
ladder. She didn’t have a
phone, and mine had no credit on it, so it was Jan to the rescue (the two men
that had appeared from nowhere had vanished to the same place). So she phoned
Brian, and told him what had happened, and he agreed to bring his ladder. He
would be just a few minutes…
While we waited the few minutes for Brian to
arrive with his ladder, we sat down on the grass, leaving the dogs to stand
guard by the tree, and had a nice little discussion about the merits of carpets
verses varnishing, and took turns taking swigs from a bottle of Cherry Cola
that I had apparently (and inexplicably) decided to bring with me. Then Brian
arrived.
He wasn’t too pleased with Margaret, it had to be said; berating her, not
harshly, but firmly, for allowing Geoff to run loose in the garden while she
changed the bedding in his hutch, because after all, sooner or later something
like this had been bound to happen. But he didn’t lecture his wife for long, for Margaret quickly started to cry (which
left him looking as though he felt extremely guilty) and in any case; there was
a job to do.
He popped the ladder up against the trunk, and
tied it securely all the way around it with rope. Then all that was left to do
was for somebody to climb up the ladder, and (hopefully) retrieve Geoff. And
guess who that somebody was? …Yep.
Alice The Great Guinea-Pig Saviour; lover of
hardwood floors and usually an avoider of anything involving ladders and
climbing, climbed slowly and carefully up the ladder. I had expected it to
wobble disconcertingly, but thanks to Brian’s careful rope winding it didn’t so much as
think about it. But all the same, it took a lot more courage than I had
previously imagined I’d got to not
only step onto it, but to keep stepping until I reached the top.
The ladder was, of course, the perfect height.
So there I was, at the top of a ladder, with me
looking at Geoff, and Geoff looking at me. There was nowhere for him to go. He
couldn’t reach any of the
other branches, and the ground was a long way down, and anyway, there was a
canal running through it, and I doubted he’d want to go in there again. No, it was simply a matter of me stretching
out my hand and grabbing him up, and then climbing back down. There was no
other way: I knew it, and he knew it.
So, I stretched out my hand. Before I could
grab him, though, Geoff decided to show me that he had thought of his own
solution to the problem. Skirting around my outstretched fingers with a
dexterity and skill that belied his fat little body, he waddled along the
branch until his little nose was directly in line with mine. Then, knowing that
I couldn’t fight back, and with
a really spiteful expression in that silly looking little face of his, he bit
my nose. Hard.
I would have cried out, but any thoughts about
pain and suchlike, were immediately sidelined by the fact that Geoff had
clambered onto my shoulder. Clutching desperately at the ladder with one hand,
I tried to clutch desperately at Geoff with the other, but he wasn’t having any of that.
Giving a single, defiant squeak – “Give me
liberty, or give me death!” said that Squeak – he braced himself, and, to the
horror of everybody else concerned, he hurled himself into space.
I really did scream then, and fell off the
ladder, backwards.
As I fell, I saw Geoff falling too. It all
seemed to be in slow motion, with me flailing my arms in a futile attempt
(attempting what, I haven‘t the
foggiest idea, but I know I was attempting something, and I know it was
futile), and Geoff, stiff as a board and with limbs splayed outwards like a
badly designed parachute. We were both going to die, obviously, I knew that; I
just hoped that it wouldn‘t hurt much.
I also hoped that Bingo wasn’t watching…
…I landed with an OOMF! On top of a mattress, held at each corner by
one of the four that had remained on the ground. I had no time to wonder where
the heck that mattress had come from, or to feel grateful for the fact that I
was still alive, or even to move, because a second later, Geoff landed squarely
onto my chest.
I flinched, his nasty sharp little claws
digging into my breasts - they were sure as hell going to smart later, I could
tell that for certain - but was too shell shocked by recent events to do
anything about it.
Geoff, for his part, looked about him, perhaps
dwelling on the fact that he too was still alive, but soon enough his mind
turned to more important matters….He waddled up to my chin. Lifting my head
forwards, our eyes met. Mine were glazed over and stunned. His were glinting
with malevolence.
Opening his mouth wide, he bit my nose again.
Harder than before, and gave another loud, defiant squeak. “Haha! Take that!”,
it seemed to say. Then he turned, and waddled off my body and onto the ground,
and trotted merrily away, back towards the tree.
It was around about that time that I began to
really hate Geoff…
…And then I woke up.
End of dream and beginning of day; I got up and washed and
dressed and walked Bingo with Jan and her two dogs and met lots of other dogs
as I always did, including Margaret and Rosie (though thankfully without the
actually non-existent guinea pig) and then I had my breakfast and headed off to
work. But at the back of my mind for the next few days the question remained:
Why the heck did I dream that??
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