Who's the Thief??

Every morning the human employees open the gates to the guinea pig hutches, and then all the guinea pigs would rush out for breakfast, exercise and some digging (typically in places they shouldn't).

But this morning just before everyone disappeared, Cutie the Alpha pig insisted on calling a meeting: "I have something very unpleasant to discuss today.  Have you guys noticed that all this week, someone has been messing up our hutches after we left?  WHO IS IT???  This nasty character has been eating all our pellets, and even kicked over all the pellet dispensers!  Not only that, his big butt even shoved all our straw bedding out the door!"

Who could it be?  Cutie the Alpha stared at a certain prime suspect: "It must have been you, Blacky!  You have the biggest butt and the most fur, practically like a broomstick!"

Blacky gazed back innocently: "It wasn't me!  I got the furball on my butt combed off last month, when the human employees gave us the annual bath."

Cutie was not convinced: "But you're the laziest.  You spend more time napping in the cages than all of us combined!"

"No no no, you're mistaken boss!"  Blacky shook his head anxiously. "I've been working really hard on coming out to exercise with everyone.  I even came when the human employees had that grass-eating party last time, remember?"

That was true.  "It must be Chocolate, Caramel and Brownie then!  You triplets are bickering all the time.  You must have kicked the straw bedding out when you were fighting!"

The triplets, caught in the act of secretly turtle-pinching each other, quickly jumped apart and put their paws in their laps: "Nope it wasn't us!  We've been busy lately.  We even found that new veggie patch the human employees put in.  Aren't you happy that we found you a new food source, so we didn't have to eat boring old grass all the time?"  (That was true too.  Everyone got scolded by the human employees for invading the new veggie patch.)

"It can only be you then, Curlsy!"  Looking around, Cutie the Alpha located a new target.  "You've been so anti-social recently.  You stay out under the trees even when the rest of us went home in the evenings.  And last time you went out with the human employees for TWO WEEKS, doing who knows what.  You must be a spy!"

Poor Curlsy started crying, "I didn't do it!  I can never go home in the afternoons because Caramel always hogs my igloo!  And the human employees kidnapped me last time because there was a lump growing under my chin.  I thought it was pretty convenient, coz then I could start storing extra food in it like the chipmunks.  But they took me to some strange place, poked me with a sharp needle, and I fell asleep.  When I woke up, my storage area was gone!!!!  I overheard them mumbling something about having spent a thousand bucks.  Hmpf, we're worth way more than a thousand bucks!  Anyway, it wasn't me!"

Cutie raised a back leg to scratch his head, "Then who is it?  We must find out!  I hate sleeping in a messed up bed, and I hate not having pellets to eat when I get hungry at night!"

Everyone started head scratching, butt scraping and paw licking to encourage some brain neuron movement.  In the end the guinea pigs decided that Puffy and Spotty would stay behind today, hide behind the bushes, and catch the thief in his act!

Cutie the Alpha gave them one final warning: "I'm gonna kick that thief's big fat behind when I catch him!  So you better confess now if it was you!"

So off everyone went.

Before long Spotty noticed a small blackbird hop down from a nearby tree.  At first it was hesitant, looking around cautiously, then it quickly ran into one of the guinea pig hutches.  A few minutes later ANOTHER blackbird flew down, hopped into a different hutch, dug around all the straw bedding with its beak, ate a lot of the pellets, and even knocked over the pellet dispenser.

They're the thieves!  Spotty and Puffy ran off to tell the Alpha, who was troubled by the news: "So it's those snivelly blackbirds!  But what can we do?  They can fly, we can't."

Spotty suggested: "Should we get the human employees to help?"

Just then the smallest human employee child happened to run out of the house.  Cutie exclaimed happily, "Great, let's tell him now!"

All the guinea pigs ran to the human child and talked all at once, trying to tell him the situation.  But the human child was not listening.  In fact, he looked somewhat nervous.  He had a bag of sweets in his hand, which he downed in a few hurried gulps, and then he quickly chucked the empty bag behind the bicycle parked by the wall before running off from the crime scene.

Mission un-accomplished.

Soon the other two human employee children came out, but they kept bouncing balls around, making it extremely hazardous to approach them.  Cutie shook his head and said, "We better wait."

Finally they saw the human employee lady come out.  She was about to change the straw beddings for them.  Cutie demonstrated his leadership qualities: "Right, I'll go talk to her!"

But just as he got near her, she suddenly turned about and accidentally almost stepped on him!  It gave him such a scare that Cutie jumped back in a hurry and ran for his life!

So blackbird thievery continued.  The guinea pigs decided that it would be a problem for another day.

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