Giant Boobs, Dead Radio Shows, Guinea Pigs

Roughly 12 years ago, City Paper wrote a story about "Frances and the Working Girls," a radio show starring a buxom woman (that would be Frances above) and mostly lady correspondents. It was sort of like the Daily Show, but on AM radio and with boobs. Sadly (I think?) it went off the air about two years later. Its home, WRC-AM 980, is also no longer with us (neither, it would seem, is the story in our somewhat lacking digital archives for 1996). Recently, I caught up with one of the correspondents from the show, Jane Hautanen, who also goes by Jane Doe (that's her behind Frances).

Hautanen, who lives between Woodley and Cleveland Parks, still works in radio (part-time with the "True Oldies" show on WMAL and with another station), and supplements a lack of lucrative radio jobs by being a licensed massage therapist. She's also a prolific blogger. She's also really into guinea pigs.

Jane Doe's Pigs is one of her blogs. With it, she provides helpful tips and links regarding guinea pig care. For those who have not considered guinea pigs as pets, Hautanen is spreading the news that they are among the few apartment-sized caged critters that do not smell.

Pigs came into her life after fish. The D.C. water killed them off, she says. Most other pets wouldn't do. Her condo building doesn't allow dogs and her place has a "bad layout for a cat. I'd have to step over the cat box every time I went to the bathroom," she explains.

She considered mice (male mice smell, female mice don't, but they die off too quickly). Rats were a possibility "but I still wanted people to visit me." Rabbits "chew through things and smell." Ferrets "smell and they bite."

Thus: the guinea pig. "They're so incredibly sweet and they have so much personality. They're not disposable pets, like a hamster," she says.

She started off with Lightning. Now she has Pandora and Perpetua.

And although Hautanen may be the only Jane Doe radio correspondent with a blog about guinea pigs, she is not the only one in D.C. promoting the cause. "Jennifer" who Hautanen says also lives in Cleveland Park, runs the pig adoption site DCguineapigs, where you can find out how to bring home your own little Fur Ball (or Kipling or Wonka or Tate).

Tags: Critters, guinea pigs, Jane Hautanen