Guinea Pig Gas Chamber Confession

This is a tragic tale. Especially when an almost-vegan has to tell it.

Catharsis. Confessions. Carma.

I mean, Karma.

So a while ago my friend told me her guinea pig had become paralyzed and jokingly (I truly believed) asked if I knew how to kill a guinea pig at home. I jokingly (truly) told her that one time at a party at my then boyfriend’s house (who happened to be everyone’s boyfriend, it turned out), we put beer in his hamster’s water thingy. We all thought this was enormously funny.

As an aside, high school keg parties are just one example of my good-girl Maranatha Christian Academy upbringing shining thorough! I still love MCA, though. :)

Anyway, either by coincidence or by hamstercide, whatever-its-name-was turned up D-E-A-D the next morning.

Oops.

So, I jokingly told this story to my friend with the paralyzed guinea pig, adding that she could probably give it a happy send off with some valium and whiskey, and then I forgot about it.

Well, later that night, she calls me in a sheer panic.

She took Marlowe (who shall not remain nameless) out of his cage and he had ulcers all over his little paralyzed legs, so she had given the unfortunate little fellow a bunch of her daughter’s codeine-laced cough syrup. She was trying to humanely kill him and relieve his pain, but he didn’t die, and now she was panicked and crying and calling me to find out how much would do it.

Okay, I’m scientifically minded and have more pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic information in my head than I’d care to admit, but I have no idea how to calculate the lethal dose of children’s codeine-laced cough syrup for a guinea pig.

So, I said, “I dunno, just give him more, I guess?”

But apparently, Marlowe was so high that he couldn’t take another sip.

(As an aside, her vet doesn’t take small animals and neither would any of the emergency vets in our vicinity).

I didn’t know what to do to help her, so I Googled, “euthanasia small animals” and found this on the Internet.

To make a long story short, she didn’t have tubing or this or that, so she tried the dreaded “Friday night method” with me reading the instructions to her over the phone. She only had a smallish bottle of vinegar and whatever baking soda was in her fridge, but she was too upset to go to the store.

In other words, she set to work on the ghastly deed quite poorly equipped. I told her to check in 45 minutes and to call me when it was done.

Just for the record, we were both in tears. Her other good friend was calling in between with her suggestions, which included things like: “Oh, for heaven's sake, just hit him over the head with a hammer!” and “Stick him behind your back tire and put it in reverse, but put him in a shoebox first so he doesn’t mess up the car.”

Anyway, fast-forward an hour. It’s nearly 11:00 pm and my friend calls me with the news.

“He’s not dead.”

What?

Ultimately, Marlowe survived a highly drugged and sedated attempted murder, followed by successful euthanasia across the county at an emergency vet that agreed to see him late that night.

Later I realized that the codeine likely slowed down his metabolic rate to such an extent as to protect him from the effects of the homemade carbon dioxide chamber.

This happened the day before our road trip. On the road, a cute little rabbit leapt into the road in the middle of nowhere while the brain surgeon was driving 70 miles per hour. He yelled, “Bunny!” and then I heard the dreaded thud, followed by my 5-year-old saying, “What bunny?”

I cried again.

Later, a bat hit us.

Everything happens in threes.

Toodles.