My Pandemic Pet
Photo/Krista Diamond.
By Krista Diamond
May
The tiny, fawn-colored animal emerges from the storm drain with little fanfare.
“I think there’s a guinea pig outside?” My husband says it like a question, like it could be a coyote, a bunny, or even a capybara, because sometimes in Las Vegas, these things appear.
I follow him outside. He’s wearing swim trunks, even though our community pool has been closed since the pandemic began. Sure enough, a rodent the size of a baked potato is hiding in the scrubby grass beside our row of townhouses. On the other side of the chain link fence, the flood channel holds soggy clothes, beer cans, and mud. Algae blooms in a trickle of water. The space is its own ecosystem. People live down there; maybe so do guinea pigs.
I call an animal shelter and ask if they will take him in.
“Can you...catch him?” The girl on the line asks, sounding doubtful.
I approach the guinea pig. He has a star-shaped patch of white on his head and wilted ears that remind me of an under watered plant. For a moment, he regards me with his wild red eyes, and then he scurries into an oleander bush.
My husband goes back inside and returns with a baby carrot. He sets it in the grass, an offering.
The sky above is cloudless. The streets are vacant. The air is hot. In the distance, the Strip is gray and quiet. The unemployment rate in Las Vegas is 29%.
The guinea pig pokes his head out and takes the carrot. “That’s just what we need,” I say jokingly. “Another mouth to feed.”
June
I’m crouched in the grass with a leaf of lettuce, when our neighbor appears, fresh off his shift. He’s a cab driver. The Strip has just reopened and he’s back at it, working graveyard. COVID-19 cases are on the rise.
“What’s the gerbil up to?” he asks.
I don’t correct him, even though I had a guinea pig as a kid so in theory I can at least identify them. Mine was named Louie, but I don’t want to name this one, don’t want to get attached. And besides, what do I really know about them? My parents told me what to do then. I am an adult now; it is my turn to figure out how to care for this thing. Or not; maybe we’ll leave it be. That’s the dilemma.
My husband has been googling guinea pigs. “It’s going to get too hot. We should bring him inside.”
Our neighbor disagrees. “He likes it out here.”
Another neighbor appears with apple slices. He places them beside the guinea pig’s other treats: a saucer of water, a napkin of spinach. We are all caring for him now. This is the most I have talked to my neighbors ever, the most I have talked to anyone besides my husband since the pandemic began.
“We should at least bring him in when it gets to be winter,” my husband says.
“If he’s still around then,” I say.
I am sure he will descend back into the storm tunnel, be carried off by a raven, flattened by a car. But later that night, in spite of my pessimism, I buy a bag of guinea pig food.
July
We step outside into the white sunlight—it’s brighter and hotter earlier each day—and the first thing we hear is shree shree shree. His shrill little sound. The guinea pig tumbles out of the oleander bush. I carry the cup of food. My husband holds the bottle of chilled water. It’s a routine now. The guinea pig connects the creak of our front door with the anticipation of breakfast.
We fill the heart-shaped ceramic bowls by the flood channel as he hops around us, shrieking with what sounds like pleasure.
I google what does it mean when guinea pig jumps in air and discover this is called popcorning. It means he is happy. There’s a video on YouTube entitled Guinea Pig Popcorning Compilation.
Who watches this nonsense, I think. I sit through all four minutes and hit replay.
In the late afternoon, when the sunlight is dreamy liquid gold in the trees, we bring him sweet green peppers. He squeaks, dips his head in the bowl and eats. We sit close to him and watch. He doesn’t mind.
July fourth brings crowds of tourists to Las Vegas. The photos on the Internet show packed casinos, congested sidewalks. Visitors with face masks dangling from their ears, pushed down to their chins. Employees there to serve strangers who breathe smoke in their faces. COVID-19 cases rise and rise.
We sit in the grass with the guinea pig and hear traffic on the street again. I am grateful that my husband hasn’t been called back to his bellman job on the Strip yet. I am glad we are safe with this strange little creature, away from the virus. But then the call comes, late one night after we’ve fed the guinea pig his vegetables, made ourselves dinner, and are clearing the dishes. My husband’s phone rings: a graveyard shift after nearly five months of being laid off. Wordlessly, he changes into his uniform. We hug goodbye.
“I’m scared we’re going to get it,” I whisper.
August
I stand beneath the fluorescent lights inside a large auditorium. A man in camouflage instructs me to stick a swab up my nose as far as it will go.
“Not deep enough,” he says, and I push until it hurts.
My husband tested positive a few days ago; I know what my results will be. Still, my face burns with anger when I see them.
What follows is a blur. I vomit, struggle to breathe, can’t taste, can’t smell, can’t sleep, can’t stay awake. My entire body aches like one big contusion. I open up Instagram and scroll. A friend on a road trip, another at a restaurant, a group at a barbecue. #vacayvibes #sundayfunday #squadgoals
We wear masks to feed the guinea pig. Clouds bruise the sky. I look at the dry cement of the storm drain and wonder what might happen if it rains. If it floods, will the little animal drown?
“Hold on, bud,” my husband says as the guinea pig scampers across the grass, sniffing at his bowl before we’ve even filled it.
The next morning, there’s a silver cat with owl-like eyes out there. The guinea pig nibbles on a blade of grass, oblivious. The feline’s tail switches back and forth.
“Get out of here,” I shout. It runs off, but I know it will be back. Or a different cat will come, or a dog, a hawk, a human who hates rodents.
“Maybe we should catch it now,” my husband says.
“We said we’d wait,” I say, going back inside to collapse on the couch for the rest of the day. “We said we’d wait for winter.”
Neither of us can sleep. We order a humane animal trap online, just in case.
September
People are always asking each other, where’s the first place you’ll go when this is all over?
More specifically, people are always asking me, where’s the first place you’ll go when you recover?
It isn’t Bora Bora or Bali or one of those fantasy places. It’s not even the tiki bar down the street or my favorite dress store in the Arts District. It’s Petco. When we finally test negative for COVID-19, my husband and I decide it’s time to catch the guinea pig. First we confer with our neighbors. I’m afraid there will be pushback from them, but they all agree it’s the right thing to do.
“I didn’t realize they’re wild,” so many people have said to me.
But the thing is, they’re not. At least, not in Las Vegas, anyway.
“He was somebody’s pet at some point,” I keep saying.
At Petco, we fill our cart with odor-control, dust-free guinea pig bedding, timothy hay, and wooden chew toys. We look at cages, trying to figure out whether he’d prefer a home with multiple levels or a little balcony.
“That one’s the best,” an employee says, pointing to one with a little hut built in. After we explain the situation, she says, “Oh yeah. That’s been happening a lot lately. People lost their houses because of COVID-19, and they just let their pets outside. Same thing happened after the 2008 recession.”
“This whole time I thought there was somebody looking for him,” I say.
“Nope.”
At home, we fill his new house with bedding, toys, and treats. And then we go outside with the trap. It takes a half-hour, but the guinea pig finally goes for the carrot. Once his feet are on the platform, the metal door closes. He thrashes back and forth, distressed. We bring him inside and gently lower him into his cage. He disappears into the hut, burrowing into the bedding where we cannot see him. We bring fresh parsley, but he doesn’t come out.
The next day bars open in Las Vegas, despite the fact that the virus is far from over. We sit cross-legged on the carpet. The guinea pig chatters his teeth at us. The websites say this means he’s upset, so we get up and close the door, leave him alone.
October
I have recovered from COVID-19, but I don’t feel the same as I did before I got sick. I’m tired, sad—a muted version of myself. I don’t know when I’ll feel normal again. I don’t think that place exists anymore.
Each night, I lie on the floor beside the cage and wait for him to come out. I read, I write, I watch Mad Men, I scroll Instagram and see weddings, parties, cocktail lounges, gyms—people eager to forget. Sometimes the guinea comes out of his little house, sees me, and darts back inside. The Internet says that I should try to get him to take food from my hand so he associates me with something he likes. I hold out a carrot; he cowers in fear, pressing himself into a corner. I am also supposed to pick him up once a week to teach him that I am nice and will not hurt him. The first time I try, he screams. I put him down and say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The second time, he scratches me.
“How’s the pig?” our neighbor asks.
“He’s good,” I say, and then under my breath to my husband. “No he’s not. He hates us.”
One day, he comes out of his hut on his own, looking up at me with his little whiskered face. He doesn’t run away at the sound of my voice. The next day, he accepts a carrot from me. Instead of eating it, he holds it in his mouth, unsure what to do. Still, it’s something.
My husband is officially back at work. 1,630 people have died of COVID-19 in Nevada.
Some nights on the Strip, people are celebrating. Other nights, they’re fighting. When friends from other places ask me what it’s like here, I say, “I love it, but I don’t know.”
The third time I pick up the guinea pig, he doesn’t squirm. He doesn’t cuddle into me or anything; he just sort of goes limp. I’m surprised by how warm his body is. I can feel his miniscule heart, beating against mine. I set him down in his soft bedding and he sits there, bewildered.
I look out our bedroom window. Downtown is glittering. The Strip is alive with light.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” I say.
“Just give it time,” my husband says. Good advice for a lot of things, I guess. But we are all so impatient.
Krista Diamond is a Las Vegas based freelance and fiction writer. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The New York Times, HuffPost, Narratively, Thrillist, Desert Companion, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by Tin House, Nevada Arts Council, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She recently completed a novel.
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