"Here piggy piggy," said James, "Come on Hercules!"

He lifted the lid and pulled the little tan and white animal out. I selected a shiny red berry and poked it into the rat-like mouth, then we put Hercules back and waited. Sure enough, after five minutes, the pig gave a squeal.

We heard the sound of bagpipes.

James lifted the lid and we both looked into the patch of straw where Hercules had been. Instead of a guinea pig, we saw a tartan bag on legs, with pipes sticking out. Hercules was now a set of bagpipes, playing himself.

We lifted what had been Hercules out and set him on the lawn. He was good at picking out tunes. He did "Amazing Grace", "Mull of Kintyre", and some Scottish dance tunes ... then he stopped and changed back into a guinea pig again.

By the time Hercules finished playing his medley, James' sister, and her Mum had come to watch, and the neighbor's kids, and the meter man, and there were some other people, on the footpath, who were hanging over the front fence, trying to get a look too.

As soon as the last note of the performance was finished, I handed Hercules to James' sister. She was too young to worry about how impossible the whole thing was. She was just so proud of her musical guinea pig, and she hugged him a little too tight, which made him give a last burst of bagpipe noise.

But now James and I felt like escaped prisoners. We wanted to run away and hide from all the curious looks! But all the people were staring at us, and at the guinea pig and there was nothing we could do but pretend everything was ordinary.

"Great magic trick wasn't it!" I said at last.

"Oh, yeah!" said James, catching on. He clapped like mad and I bowed.

"I was going to do it for the end of term break-up, but now that you've all seen it... I'll have to think of another one!"

"Pretty amazing, wasn't it" agreed James, and we heard people murmuring things like "Oh, it was just a magic trick!" and some people started to walk away.

"Well folks," I said to the small crowd that still lingered expectantly, "I have to go now. I can't do the trick again, or you might work out how its done!"