Upon returning from our adventures at Wallis Sands Beach in Rye, NH and finding more Hermit Crabs in the Atlantic Ocean than you can imagine, my sons were on this kick of wanting a pet hermit crab for home. Yeah. No. I don’t know. Me being Mama who felt this may be a good pet, gave into the idea that we could at least go to the local pet store and look into this …. so we ventured to the pet store when we happened upon this cutie …
This little, big guy was separated from the rest of the animals; this told me that he was either going after the females and babies or maybe he wasn’t for sale. I asked the nice sales person at the pet store who told me my first thought was correct. This guinea pig was also put on sale for $15 less than the other ones because of this reasoning, he had to be separated and so they wanted to find him a home quicker, I suppose?! I let the kids make a vote; hermit crab or guinea pig. I also gave some feedback that would help sway them in the direction of this guinea pig versus a hermit crab {or two or three of them}. The vote was in …
We bought this guinea pig, shavings and food and brought him home. What? A cage you ask? I already had one from owning a guinea pig and various small animals like this when I was a teenager and young adult. So we came home, I cleaned out the cage and we worked to name him.
I am a huge advocate of teaching my children good, healthy debating & negotiation skills so I let the kids have a “kid meeting” for naming of our guinea pig. They were having some difficulties getting the boys, I think specifically Aj, come on board with a name. When they are at this type of standstill, that’s when they come to me for assistance …
Aj was saying that this guinea pig looks like coffee; ‘you know the brown is like your coffee Mama and the white is like the stuff you put in your coffee!’ You know, he had a point. Then I heard the other kids out. Basically some wanted to name him Coffee while others had some other name, but they couldn’t come to a decisive agreement on one name. That is when, after Aj said what he said about the coffee, I spoke up and said, “Dunkin… Dunkin Donuts Coffee”. That is when all four kids were like, “Yea, Dunkin! I like that, do you like that, do you like that” and so on until we had four positive kid votes for Dunkin aka Dunkin Donuts Coffee.
Dunkin leads a very spoiled, loved life and is starting to ‘find his voice’ in our happy chaotic home! {squeak, squeak}
