Early this afternoon A. discovered our oldest guinea pig Flopsy: limp and prostrate, shallowly panting. It's warm outside, so we don't know if this is the result of old age, or if she's just suffering with heat exhaustion.
We gave her an ice pack and misted her with water, but she's still pretty limp, and not looking good.
Kids are distraught, of course. D is more stoic than S, as usual.
Here's the reason I'm banishing myself to my room: S got out a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle box and held it up with a calculating eye. "Is this too big?" she mused. I didn't see where this was going until she got out the box of Breton crackers - a long rectangular-shaped tube - dumped the crackers into a Ziploc bag and caught my eye: "Will this work?" Finally I cotton on to the fact that S is choosing an appropriate coffin for Flopsy's final rest. And the mental image of squeezing a guinea pig into that skinny lil' cracker box made me almost, but not quite, giggle.
So I'm in here, writing it out, so I can go back out there and keep it together and console the disconsolate. Flopsy has been a good pet, and I am rather fond of her. I'm praying for wisdom on how best to help the kids with this. We have been preparing for it for some time - the pig is 7 years old. But when it comes down to it, we aren't really prepared for The Event.
Latest: D and S are now working on a Guinea Pig Album and they want to put pictures together. I must go. Here's a pic of Flopsy last month:
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