Peanut Thunder

Peanut Thunder is the "baby" (and by baby, I mean he's the youngest, but he's also the biggest & fattest piggy of them all ;-) ).

I got him when he was 3 weeks old from a lady in Pittsburgh (hi Lisa!). She had gotten either 1 or 2 female guinea pigs (called "sows"), and it turned out that one of them was pregnant. At the time, I had only Lightning (who will be introduced in my next guinea pig post), and was looking to get him a friend. Well, when Lisa posted that her sow had 3 boys & 1 girl on Christmas Eve 2004, I was happy for her. She was going to have 2 cages - one for the boys (boars) and one for the girls. Alas, the Evil Cavy Fairy struck, and the sexes of her baby piggies were reversed! What was she going to do with just ONE boar? That's right, let me adopt him!

Hubby, Lightning, and I drove to Pittsburgh (from Cleveland, OH where we lived at the time) on a chilly January Saturday to meet Lightning's possible new "brother." If the meeting did not go well, then we were not going to take him. Luckily, Lightning is an easygoing fella and took all of the abuse from the baby boar.

How did Peanut Thunder get his name, you ask? Well, Lisa's kids had already named him "Peanut," and since I already had "Lightning," I needed a "Thunder!" Therefore to help make the transition from being their gp to being mine, he was named "Peanut Thunder." When I first got him he was this small (Lightning is the one with the white blaze going up his nose):

Now? He outweighs Lightning by a good 3/4 lb:

PT also makes the cutest dang sounds. He likes to "bok-bok-bok" all around the cage. When he was a baby, he would literally sound like Pac-Man.

He's a Red White Crested American Boar.