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Words spoken at a guinea pig's funeral:

"Maybe on some other plane you're grazing with your brother, Chino, and can tell him all about the life you led after he left.  But for sure, your molecules and your energies go back to the earth and slip back into the cycle of life."

He was wrapped in the paper he used to love to hide within and buried by the forsythia bush.

* * * *

(comic relief from the night before, when a guest was stopping by)  

"Can you imagine if he comes in and he looks in the cage and he's like, 'Oh, a guinea pig, how nice!' and we have to say, 'Um . . . he's dead.'  And he's like, 'Um, why do you have a dead guinea pig?' and we'd be like, 'Well, he hasn't been dead very long.'  And then we'd change the subject."

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