Long story short: My family and I are now in love with a pet store animal. We've been planning to take on a new guinea pig pretty much from the moment we woke to find the house unexpectedly silent last Christmas. I've been spamming my father's inbox with notices of guinea pigs in the local animal shelter.

Buuut... no. This one individual from a pet shop. Bugger. I don't know what to doooo... As they go, this chain is hardly the WORST - they eschew anything even remotely resembling puppy mills, they don't 'get rid of' animals that don't sell or 'excess' - I've passed by and seen the same bird there for years on end, just sort of living there, in good health. Their rodents are of all different ages - the guinea pig in question is definitely into adulthood, much older than the babies I've usually seen in pet stores. They have employees hired more or less with the express purpose of socialising the animals and making sure customers play nice with them. But they are a chain, and they are a pet shop that treats living beings as commodities, however nice they seem.

On the other hand, we've kind of decided it's time to take in a new pig, and it wouldn't be right to go to a shelter and pick one up as a consolation prize. Granted, getting a guinea pig from the shelter is better, and cheaper, and... well, everything....

And I suppose shoplifting the pig is out of the question.  :-\