Pigs and Rats, Portrait-Style

Many people don't know this about me, but I was homeschooled from fourth grade until the end of high school.  The first question I usually get is why I homeschooled, and for me it was pretty simple: I was able to learn more and do a lot more cool things in a day when my mom taught me at home than if I had gone to public school.  I was an introverted little kid, so I really enjoyed myself.

One of the cool things I got to do was take photography classes at a local homeschool center.  I used my parents' old Minolta film SLR and took zillions of pictures on my afternoons off, and I most often turned my lens on my family's pets.  By the time I was fifteen, we had two dogs, two guinea pigs, two rabbits, and ten rats.  I have dozens of negatives and prints of my dogs and rats squirreled away somewhere in my old room, and that's after a generous culling.

So I guess it's only natural that now that I have a fantabulous camera that does everything I want it to, that I would start taking pictures of pets again.  The guinea pig is named Percy and belongs to my mom.  She was a companion to an older piggie for a while and was pretty high-strung, but after her cagemate died she became very affectionate and sweet.

The rat is the very old Miranda of the four Sex and the City girls my mom and I adopted in January 2010.  She's getting creaky and she has some tumors, but she's mellowed out a lot since her younger days.

Pig face!  

Lumberjack and I have been on the lookout for some baby boy rats to adopt and keep at the apartment.  We didn't take Miranda with us when we moved out since she was already pretty old, but she's still alive and kicking nine months later - usually rats only live until about two, and she's at least two and a half.  She's a tough lady!