Along the Gold Coast O ur son Spencer’s second-grade class has a classroom pet, a guinea pig named Rocky. Alternating throughout the school year, each student has the job of taking care of Rocky during the day. I think the job title is “Rodent Wrangler,” or something like that. Also, different kids volunteer to bring him home over weekends and holiday breaks. Apparently the competition is fierce for who gets to take Rocky home for the lengthy Christmas holiday. When deciding who gets this honor, the teacher considers a family’s vacation travel plans to see who can offer the guinea pig the most luxurious, over-the-top vacation experience possible. Such is life along the Gold Coast. Spencer has never brought Rocky home for a weekend, yet he volunteered us for Christmas break. He told his teacher we would take him to Aspen. Apparently no families were going to Paris, Monte Carlo or the Vatican this year, so Spencer won out. A trip to Aspen was news to his mother and me. I hate skiing and I hate John Denver, may he rest in peace. I wanted to stay home and binge- watch Netflix so I would know what people were talking about at the next cocktail party. But my wife, Meredith, is very indulgent of our son and very encouraging of his extracurricular activities, so we went along with the idea. There were some things we had to do in preparation for our esteemed guest. We left our cat, Diana the Huntress, with a cat- sitter. Rocky has been known to scratch and bite, so we bought a first aid kit and gloves. We bought a deluxe travel cage and put a bumper sticker on it that read, “I’d rather be skiing.” A lot of people, including Spencer’s teacher, think that having just one guinea pig is fine, but Meredith found out on the Internet that they need a friend; a cage mate, if not necessarily a soul mate. Someone to play with. Someone to cuddle with. Someone to assert dominance over by ripping them to shreds if necessary. So she wanted us to get Rocky a companion. I told her it would be crazy to get hima short-term companion that we would be stuck with when he went back to school. “What if,” she said, “when we get to Aspen, we call a pet escort service and have them send a cute, female guinea pig up to our hotel room?” “There’s a word for that, Meredith. It’s called prostitution.” We flew First Class and Rocky had his own seat. When we checked into the hotel the desk clerk noticed Rocky in his small travel cage and asked if we would like to rent their luxurious, two-story guinea pig cage for the duration of our stay. “It has velour bedding, a separate dining area, ramps, tunnels, a hammock and igloo-shaped hiding spots.” “What does a guinea pig need to hide from?” I asked.
By J.C. Duffy Rodent Holiday
“His feelings.” We rented it.
Although guinea pigs eat fresh greens like kale and broccoli, Rocky seemed to have a hungry eye on the lobby’s giant gingerbread man made from 200 pounds of cookie dough. Next to it was a Nativity scene, and I could tell he wanted to leap into it and wreak inappropriate havoc. That night at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, either visions of sugarplums danced in his head or the visual stimuli almost gave him a seizure. Before we got there they had also held a daily Menorah lighting during Hanukkah, but we didn’t know if Rocky was Jewish.
Christmas Week in Aspen is a winter wonderland: light-festooned trees on snowy streets with Victorian homes and exclusive boutiques and galleries, Victorian carolers, ice-skaters, sleigh rides, trails of torch-bearing skiers winding down a mountain slope, crackling fires, mugs brimming with toasty beverages, New Year’s Eve fireworks… yes, everything your typical guinea pig dreams about.
We made Rocky run the gauntlet: a children’s story hour, cookie decorating, art projects, a canine fashion show, photos with Santa and live reindeer, and s’mores and hot cocoa around a roaring bonfire. I think his favorite thing was when we attended Ullr Nights, an on-mountain celebration honoring the Norse God of Snow, Ullr. I have no idea why I think that. Rocky didn’t take to skating, skiing, tubing or snow biking, but he was a natural at snowboarding. Spencer posted a video of him showing off some moves on YouTube and it got more views than the water skiing squirrel and the surfing vole combined. Après-ski, the four of us would go to a ski lodge and listen to live jazz over mead, mulled wine, hot chocolate and lettuce, respectively. We took Rocky to a fancy restaurant for Christmas dinner. To keep a low profile, my wife wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and he simply looked like a take-out burrito. I like to think we gave Rocky a lifetime of golden memories to dwell on as he spends his nights alone in the classroom running to nowhere in his exercise wheel. At some point his trip to Aspen may seem like it was all a fantastic dream. But it won’t seem that way to Spencer’s teacher and classmates, because we have many hours of video proof, and after all, that’s what matters.Follow Rocky on Instagram @aspenrodent. --- J.C. Duffy is a cartoonist and writer whose cartoons appear regularly in The New Yorker and other magazines. His books include collections of his syndicated newspaper comic strip, “The Fusco Brothers.” *
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