A Birthday Miracle: How I Found My Guinea Pig in the Snow

It was one of those cold, icy, and magical winter mornings in January when my life changed forever

It was one of those cold, icy, and magical winter mornings in January. It was the 3rd, the day before my birthday, and a homeschool hiking group I was part of was sledding at a park near my house. Since I had nothing planned for the day, I wanted it to go by as fast as possible. My dad had taken the day off from work to join us, so we packed our sleds and headed out.

Once my family arrived, we quickly realized two things: we were severely underdressed for the weather, and we all needed to use the restroom. My brothers and I went first, followed by my mom. Great! Now, I was tasked with taking care of my two very crazy brothers, who had been cooped up indoors all day. I told them to go play by the rocks, which they did, while I leaned against the car and put on gloves to warm my shivering hands.

Suddenly, I heard one of my brothers shout, “There’s a rabbit behind this rock!” My mom had just finished up, and my dad was still stuck in traffic, so I ran over, my feet crunching over the snow, and motioned for my mom to come, too. When I finally reached the spot, I froze in place. Huddled between the boulders was not a rabbit but a tiny, trembling ball of fur. Her light, dough-coloured coat was speckled with bits of snow, and her dark eyes stared up at me, wide and terrified. My heart squeezed—how long had she been out here? She looked so fragile, so helpless. I knew instantly we couldn’t leave her.

My brain was spinning. What if she bit us? What if she ran away? What if we couldn’t keep her warm long enough to make it home? I glanced at my brothers, who were still staring at her in awe (honestly, no help), and my mom, who was already pulling off her hat to scoop her up. “Okay,” she said, trying to calm my brothers, who were already begging to keep the guinea pig. 'Let’s block the rocks with the sleds. That’ll stop her from escaping. And then… then we’ll figure out what to do next. We came up with a plan. My brothers and I blocked any gaps between the rocks with our sleds, and my mom carefully scooped up the guinea pig into her hat. Just then, my dad arrived and started walking toward us. My brothers ran to him, eager to share our discovery. He was surprised and not very happy when we told him our desire to take the guinea pig home.

We now had another decision to make: Should we still go sledding? I stared at my brothers in disbelief. We had a half-frozen guinea pig sitting in my mom's hat, and they still wanted to go sledding? My toes were already numb, and I could feel her shivering in my hat. But their pleading eyes—and the fact that they outvoted me—meant we were heading to the hill anyway. By the way, this happens a lot in my house. I sighed and tugged my gloves back on, silently promising Muffin we'd be home quickly anyway. When we arrived at the hill, people were very surprised to find a guinea pig in my mom’s hat. “are you taking her home?” someone asked us we didn’t know I really wanted to it was the day before my birthday I felt entitled to the guinea pig I had already come up with a name for her after all are breaking through my thoughts someone else asked a question “sorry what did you say?” I said, adjusting my grip on the hat. “Have you picked a name yet?” they asked again. “Oh yes! I picked bread.” my brothers thought it was weird, but I eventually convinced them,

so After a while of sledding, we headed home. On the way, I kept coming back to the name bread. It just didn’t feel right…something similar, but it had to be different, and then it hit me: muffin! I had to now share it with my family this time; my brothers were much more enthusiastic about the name as we kept driving My mom stopped at a pet store to find supplies for the guinea pig. Unfortunately, they only had wood chip bedding, so we left empty-handed. In the car, I called my best friend and neighbour I was so excited to share that I now had a pet since I had never had one before other than two dogs she, ironically, had wanted a guinea pig for her birthday a few months back.

Once we got home, I needed to find a makeshift cage. Thankfully, we had a giant plastic tub in the basement, so I used that but also ordered a C&C cage from Amazon. I started Googling and researching all things guinea pig and realized two important things: we had no proper guinea pig food. I looked down at muffin, stroking her head she peaked her head out, twitching her tiny pink nose, But my research quickly revealed a new problem—guinea pigs don’t do well alone. I groaned. 'Mom, we need to get her a friend.' And just like that, Muffin’s arrival had already turned our lives upside down.

Fast forward to almost two months later, at the end of February, we had been searching for what felt like forever, and nothing was working until one morning, we finally found a pair of female guinea pigs for sale on Kijiji. We went to pick them up, and everything went smoothly My brothers named them Evie and Nibbles, and introducing them to Muffin went well. The rest is history!

Thank you for reading the story of how I found my guinea pig in the snow. I hope you enjoyed this. I wanted to share this for you to get to know me and my guinea pigs better and also to share that guinea pigs are not great gifts, especially if someone has never had a guinea pig or rodent before because it doesn’t always end well (this is just my opinion)

if you enjoyed this blog, make sure to check out my other blog, How to tell the difference between guinea pigs hamsters and gerbils, so you don’t make the same mistake as my brother!