Two little lives

Pets go from childhood to senility within the lives of your children. A guinea pig aged five is an old man, his whole life encompassed within just a few years of a child's development. And today we buried the last of our two -  Flopsy, no longer the heavy aggressive overweight big boy he had been when overwheening his brother Scamper, but skinny and prone to fly attack. Scamper had died on New Year's Eve in the morning, as if not wanting to see another year. And this afternoon, on what was probably the last breath of a summerlike Sunday, Flopsy quietly slipped away. We won't have another pet at the moment. So our garden is now just for plants and grass and trees. I'll no longer see, through the window of my study on misty mornings,  my daughter moving his run and putting him out to crop another patch of grass.
Though brought up to be a  non-pet person, hardly ever having handled an animal before, I learned a lot of love and care from these two little men. Now they lie at peace, buried in the garden that was almost their whole world.