Small rodents make wonderful pets. Anyone who has owned one would readily aggree that hamsters, girlbils, and mice provide an owner with hours of amusement and years of companionship. Rabbits are fabulous for those who are looking for a quiet playmate, while rats and ferrets are hyperactive and surprisingly intelligent. Guinea pigs are another very popular choice for a small pet. A website dedicated to guinea pigs boasts on their front page that there is no question that "guinea pigs make excellent pets [and are] docile, low maintenance, and unbelievably cute."
             I strongly beg to differ, unless "docile" means "boring" and "low maintenance" means that you only need to scoop up piggy pellet poop every few minutes. Calling a guinea pig "unbelievably cute" is at, very best, a far stretch. Their bodies are shaped like a packing tube, fat through the middle and flat at both ends.
             To anyone who is considering purchasing a guinea pig and is convinced that no other rodent will do, I would urge them to go to a local lumber yard and get themselves a lovely block of wood instead. I am convinced that after weighing the positives and negatives, an ordinary log would prove to be a far better pet than a guinea pig.
             For the sake of specifics, let's assume that the common guinea pig is being compared to a standard block of Northern Red Oak wood, commonly used for firewood.
             Consider first that very little is actually known about the history of the guinea pig. No one is exactly sure where these creatures originally came from, so their native habitat may have been a sandy desert, a forrest, or mountain regions. This emptiness of information regarding the species' past does not make seem interesting nor mysterious. Quite the contrary in fact, it makes the guinea pig seem dull. A block of wood, on the other hand, has a glorious, rich history. Imagine that your beloved block of wood was once part of a hardy, eighty-foot-tall tree, who had majestical...