Small Furry South American Critters

* I was quite excited to find that the No Reservations episode where Anthony Bourdain goes to Peru was rerunning on the Travel Channel recently because I know how much Pp loves the country...AND its guinea pigs...AAAAAND the episode featured them, both in their live adorable fuzzy state and their dead delectable (according to some) munchy state.

I have noted before how much Pp loved Sheila Wheila Monster, the long-haired piggie that was a member of the McPolack family for many years. I've always been surprised by how people can so love something that they are eventually going to eat. (We never ate Sheila, just in case you were wondering.) I remember meeting a boy at the Deerfield Fair who was laying against his prizewinning beef cow...a cow that would soon be turned into hamburger, hamburger that he would eat. He seemed entirely unfazed by this fact.

Recently I learned of a guinea pig festival. It's held in Peru and the piggies are dressed up in adorable costumes. And then they are eaten. I asked Pp if he could explain to me why they did this and he told me "What you've got to understand is they live with these creatures everyday...they're running around on the kitchen floor. They love them." Of course it is a good thing, a VERY good thing, to treat the creature you are going to eat with love and respect. It seems healthy, honestly. I don't really know where I'm going with this so I'm moving on to...

*A chinchilla update: Harry the Wonder Chinchilla now has free reign of the family room. He's been working PP for quite some time now, sitting on his haunches, holding the bars of his cage with one paw and an apple twig in the other, staring at my dad and silently munching. I told McMumsy that Harry would eventually have the run of the entire house.