Hemophobia
Noun
1. Fear of blood.

Xenophobia
Noun
1. Fear of strangers or foreigners.

Xenohemophobia
Noun
1. Fear of strange blood.

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Today, I had just given the guinea pigs a handful of greens and they were greedily munching away, when I looked over and saw dried blood coating the rim of their white pellet bowl. Looking more closely I see dried blood splattered on the back wall of their cage. Holy Heck! I look at the two little fur balls. Neither one seems hurt. They had just been yelling at me to feed them moments ago. But there was the blood, which could not to be dismissed. My mothering instinct over-ruled the part of my nervous system that likes to shut down in these moments and take a little nap.

There is something very daunting about searching for the source of unexplained strange blood, especially when you are also hoping you will not faint once you find it. With much dread I lifted, inverted, prodded, probed, ruffled, palpated, quizzed and frisked those two squirming veggie monsters with bated breath. Nothing. Not even a zit.

My mind went back to the previous night. I had to take a pain pill with caffeine, because it's sometimes the only thing that will work for me. That kept me up until about 2 AM. Once, during the early hours, I heard one of the girls cough a few times really hard. They do occasionally get some hay caught or something goes down the wrong tube and then they cough. Guinea pigs cannot hurl, so they cough as a default. Still, this was hard enough that I almost got up to check on them. But it stopped and I forgot all about it. Now I'm thinking that whatever they shoved down their throats wrong had actually ripped up their throat enough for it to bleed a little. Then they coughed blood onto the back of their cage and dribbled it around the rim of their food bowl.

The whole bloody incident reminded me of another recent encounter.

A month or so ago BlindHorse was getting ready for work in the morning and he cut his finger on something. Now, I knew this because, even though we've lived here for 8 months, even though the bandages have been in the exact same place all those 8 months and even though he has needed, asked for, and retrieved himself a bandage from this exact same place many times in the past 8 months, he still had to ask me, "Hey, Honey, where are the bandages?" It's a guy thing. I know you girls feel me here.

To be more precise though, he said, "Hey, Honey, everything is okay and it's really not that bad, but where are the bandages?" He says this while carefully hiding from me whatever body part may be bleeding. This way I don't suffer the shock of his oozing life force, and my vivid imagination, causing me to pass out. And this way he doesn't have to wait five minutes for me to come back around before he finds out where the damn bandages are. It's a little system we've worked out over the years.

So, off he goes on this morning, I kiss him bye at the door, lock-up behind him and go back to bed. Hey, it's 5 AM. Fageddabowdit! A few hours later I wake up and flip on the bedroom light and freeze, transfixed in horror, at the Bram Stoker gout of blood smeared across the switch-plate. I forgot in that moment that just this morning my darling husband cut his g-darn hand and asked me for a bandage. Instead, it's like stepping into one of those late night movies where you're screaming at the stupid woman, "Don't open the door!! It's NOT the pizza delivery guy!!!" It was very handy that I was standing next to a nice soft bed.

On that morning I realized I really, really don't like strange blood showing up unexpectedly in my daily routine. It kind of throws my whole system off. And by system, I mean my brain's electrical system, cause I go down like a tranquilized elephant on the Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

And then today, I realized that the guinea pigs rank higher than my husband on my mothering instinct meter, since when he's bleeding I do not force myself to stay conscious while I painstakingly scrutinize him for injury. I just yell to him from the other room, "They're in the First Aid box in the closet!"

Poor bugger.