Q: Do guinea pigs sleep in cages or aquariums?

A: When guinea pigs sleep, they sleep in cages or aquariums or laundry baskets or between couch cushions or baseball gloves or piles of unread literary journals.

That's when they sleep. When they're not sleeping they can be found in shoes and Christmas trees and showers and washing machines and serving bowls and at the gun range  and inside cooked turkeys about to be sliced for Thanksgiving and in car engines that won't start and standing outside your bedroom door at 3AM and building a couch fort in your hallway while the fire rages.

They sleep about 3 hours a day. I spend the other 21 hours praying that they fall asleep. Seldom are my prayers answered. Nor my letters begging for help from the police. It seems the pigs have learned to read.

No wonder that lab offered them to me so cheap. And why the scientists laughed when I drove away. And why that one scientist, a lady, tracked me down a mile from the lab, looked into my eyes and said, "Your life is in danger." I thought she was criticizing my driving. You know how dramatic lady scientists can be.