My sister Julie bought a pig. Not a puppy. Not a kitten. Not even a hamster or a rabbit. A pig. It was a black-haired Vietnamese pot-bellied piglet. She lost all claims to creativity by naming him Pig-Pig. Not Ham-ster, not Boar-Butt, not Baby Back Ribs, but Pig-pig. Pig for short.
When I first met Pig-pig, he had outgrown his cute, bunny-sized stage: he had left his stubby, wet piggy-snout behind – a snout which Julie kissed lovingly and repeatedly. Maybe I would have warmed to him more if I had memories of holding his apple-sized belly in my palm, interlacing my fingers between his tiny hooves, listening to his baby-sized snuffs while he nuzzled against my chest.
But I didn't have the pleasure. When I first came nose-to-snout with my porcine nephew, he was already a 200-pound, honking, snorting, beast-borne-of-the-devil, complete with dripping nostrils and an underbite of sharp beige teeth. Now, I love animals to the point where I’ll sob if the horse falls over in a Western movie, but couldn’t give a rat’s ass for the cowboy that was shot through the chest. However, I never found a single thing to love about Pig-pig. I'd have had grilled his sausages and smothered them with gravy, if I hadn't been sickened by the thought of what sort of diseases might crawl within his tough flesh. He had the biggest, fattest, hardest rump I’ve ever seen on a pig, topped with flakey black skin, coarse hairs, all saturated in a cloud of hog halitosis.
Julie had been told that Pig-pig belonged to a miniature variety of pig and that he wouldn't get big. But man, did this pig get BIG. If he was standing in a doorway staring you down, his width filled the doorframe. You would have to high-jump over a side bulge of his belly (which I would never attempt, due to his vicious persona – more about that later) if you needed to escape. He was about as long as a love-seat sofa. But that’s where his commonality with ‘love’ ended. He could have been useful as a broom, but his sparely-haired belly only narrowly missed contact with the ground. I'm not sure how his thin, stumpy legs carried that load without snapping.
Pig-pig may have had an excuse for his poor adult behavior. As a piglet, Pig-Pig tried to commit suicide. He knocked a bottle of Advil off the bathroom counter and proceeded, not only to crunch through the child-resistant packaging and eat most of the plastic bottle, but also to snuffle up all the tasty tablets inside. When Julie came home from work, he was lying on his side, wheezing. Upon further investigation, she discovered the saliva-encrusted remnants of the Advil container, and rushed him to the vet, 911-style. He was still a cute piglet at that point, so she didn’t need a fork lift truck to move him as would be necessary some years later.
According to the vet, Pig-pig had 50-50 chance of survival. By this time, Julie was completely in love with her little lap-pig, but still needed some time to think before agreeing to the $4000 vet bill which might – or might not – preserve his life. In the end, she didn't have the heart to give up on him, and her guilt for his hardships was unbearable. In due course, Julie was sitting next to his infant incubator, hand-feeding him chunks of raw tomato, which she declared, with tear-soaked, adoring eyes and wobbling lower lip, was his favorite food.
Needless to say, Pig-pig made it through his ordeal alive, but from that day forth, he was a changed pig. The liver damage, caused by the suicide attempt meant he could no longer hold his bladder too well. So, while Julie's house began to smell more like an ammonia-filled pig sty every day, her and Pig-pig’s love for each other grew tenfold. It was clear that Pig adored Julie. As he got too big to snuggle on her lap, he satisfied himself by lying on the sofa and resting his head on her lap, while she scratched behind his ears. Everyone else sat as far away as possible. When he got too fat and too heavy to lift himself onto the sofa, he would sit on the floor and put his chin up on her knee. It was at this point in his obesity that I had the pleasure of meeting him. Pig-pig didn't have the same affection for anyone else that he did for Julie. He tolerated Julie's husband, Pete, accepting him as a fellow pig, lower on the pig hierarchy. But, upon any other person that dared to enter his sty, Pig-pig declared a silent war. Well, not silent. Honks and snorts were abundant. If he had it his way, it would be him and Julie and a trough of tomato salsa forever, alone.
And so it was that I was sitting on the sofa, happily catching up on lost time with Julie. I heard him first. It was a grunt. More like a fog horn than an animal noise. (On what planet did Old McDonald come up with the cute "oink" sound?) This was a shock in itself as we were nowhere near a farm nor a shipping dock. I had, at that point, forgotten that Julie had a pig, much less a pig living in her living room. I looked into the direction of the noise and, at first I didn’t see him. Just a tower of brown fluffy blankets piled high. But then the pile of blankets moved – they shook, shuddered and trembled as if the earth was quaking underneath them. Underneath, Pig was struggling to lift himself to his grand old porkin' size. Each movement was accompanied by a honk or a snort. It sounded like a drowning ogre with a bad case of arthritis. Then, after a couple of steps from under his fluffly brown blankets, a huge black snout, two peg legs and two piggy eyes emerged.
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed, and laughed nervously.
Pig-pig’s reputation proceeded him, but I did attempt to approach him in a gesture of friendship. After all, I love animals, and they love me - maybe he’d take a liking to me. A series of louder grunts and head-shaking stopped me in my tracks. It was obvious he was saying "Stand Back, Imposter". Julie giggled, she found it adorable, no doubt.
“Is he friendly?” I asked. Of course, I'd heard he wasn't, but I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Julie got up, strode over and scratched Pig-pig’s head, and in baby-talk, sing-sung, “Yes, he is, isn't he, Pig-Pig? You very fwiendly.” Pig honked back at her in agreement…or in disagreement…I’m not sure as I can’t translate Pig-lish, but there was a definite mixture of emotions welling up in the animal. I could tell he enjoyed momma’s scratching, but he still held me fixed in his beady eyes. I decided to back off. Give him time, I reasoned.
Meanwhile, Julie and I continued catching up and Pig-pig continued standing and staring at me, still half covered in fluffy brown blankets. It could have been a moment from a horror film, but Pig-pig was, after all, Family. I soon forgot he was even there.
Suddenly, out the corner of my eye, I saw a giant flash of brown-and-black. It took a running sprint towards me, full force, honking like a pig at war. I screamed and yanked my feet up from the floor, jumping up onto cushions at the back of the sofa. My heartbeat tripled. I expected him to dive up onto the sofa and attack me ferociously. Luckily, Pig-pig's snout stopped short at where my feet had been, honking his dissatisfaction at having missed out on a tasty treat – my unsuspecting toes.
“Julie! Save me!” I screamed.
Julie laughed, “He's just saying hello!” She's laughing her head off, clearly in denial that she has fallen in love with a sadistic monster.
“Get him away!” I plead.
As she cajoles him back to his piggy bed, she's still chuckling. I start to giggle too, I guess it was kind of funny. But only because I'd moved my feet in time.
That night, I slept on the sofa - with Pig-pig only a few feet away, waking me up with a cacophony of nighttime snorts and grumbles. Every time I moved to get comfortable, he gave an extra loud honk - as if I were disturbing him. I had tucked my hands under my pillow, careful not to leave any tempting, hanging appendages within Pig-pig’s reach. I was thankful Pig-pig was too fat to get up on the sofa. But lying there awake, as still as a corpse in a coffin, I realized how thirsty I was. I didn’t really want to get up, but the more I tried to ignore the thirst, the more intense it got. Finally, I heard Pig-Pig's snorting turn rhythmically into snores.
So I dragged myself, sleepily, and as silently as I could, into the kitchen. As I tip-toed past him, his snores turned silent, followed by his huge hallmark honk. Damn it, I had woken him up and I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t happy about my midnight movements.
Having poured myself some water and quenched my ravenous thirst, I turned around, only to see two piggy eyes, glinting in the moonlight, at the kitchen door, blocking my exit. Funny how he could be so silent when he wanted to. Once we locked eyes, he started up his threatening noises again. We stood there, staring each other down, while I tried to think about a plan of action. It was just me, him and the darkness now, in a midnight duel of sorts.
“Shoo! Shoo!” I whispered, waving my hand at him. I really wanted to get back to the safety of the sofa, but whenever I took a step towards this big beast, he grunted louder. I didn't put it past him to take a chunk out of my leg – I'd glimpsed his sharp teeth during his practice run earlier. I tried shouting, quietly at first. “Julie!” Then louder, “JUUULIIEEE!” Finally, Pete came out and rescued me. He nudged Pig out the way with his knee, and Pig resentfully obliged, but not without a menacing honk that said, “I’ll get you later.”
As I settled back to sleep, and Pig-pig settled back down into his fluffy blankets - which incidentally were fluffier than the tread-bare, hand-me-down sheets that I was trying to find comfort in - I made a mental note to myself to spend tomorrow night at my mum's house.
I found out later that year that I’d made a clean escape…
My dad came to visit for Christmas from England and stayed at Julie’s house.
Pig-pig, probably still dreaming about the taste of my toes that he’d been cheated out of, attempted the same exact techniques on my dad. This time, Pig-pig got lucky. Dad is not as young, quick and nimble as me. Pig-pigs yellow, rotten teeth sunk deeply into my dad’s ankle, causing a gushing forth of blood. It was clear that it was no longer Julie and Pete’s house. This was Pig-pig’s house.
It also turned out that Pig-pig was a creature of habit. Just like he did to me, he cornered my dad in the kitchen when Julie and Pete were out at work. Dad, who has a violent streak anyway and had already been wounded in one battle with Pig-pig, took a course of action that I would only have dreamed of.
Dad whacked Pig-pig over the head with a Teflon frying pan. Pig-Pig’s tooth flew out of his mouth and skid across the floor. Pig-pig oinked and ran away. Dad threw the evidence in the trash can and exited the kitchen with his glass of water.
“Bloody, bastard pig,” said my Dad.
Julie did her best to keep Dad and Pig-pig separate from that point on. Funny that she felt more concern for Pig-pig’s lost tooth, than my dad’s ankle. But I suppose even I would say Pig-pig is slightly cuter than our dad.
When Julie moved into her first-owned house, she started keeping Big-Big Pig-Pig in a shed/outside in the garden. He was no longer a house pig. Living in the garden only served to make Pig-pig even more repulsive. Flies began buzzing around his coarse-haired back. Once he escaped into the neighbor’s garden and three people had to push his stubborn behind to get him home.
Today, Pig-pig lives in a pig sanctuary, after Julie sold her house and left California. All I can say is, those other sanctuary pigs should watch their hooves. It ain't no sanctuary any more. Life with Pig-pig is a fate much more terrifying than becoming bacon.
When I first met Pig-pig, he had outgrown his cute, bunny-sized stage: he had left his stubby, wet piggy-snout behind – a snout which Julie kissed lovingly and repeatedly. Maybe I would have warmed to him more if I had memories of holding his apple-sized belly in my palm, interlacing my fingers between his tiny hooves, listening to his baby-sized snuffs while he nuzzled against my chest.
But I didn't have the pleasure. When I first came nose-to-snout with my porcine nephew, he was already a 200-pound, honking, snorting, beast-borne-of-the-devil, complete with dripping nostrils and an underbite of sharp beige teeth. Now, I love animals to the point where I’ll sob if the horse falls over in a Western movie, but couldn’t give a rat’s ass for the cowboy that was shot through the chest. However, I never found a single thing to love about Pig-pig. I'd have had grilled his sausages and smothered them with gravy, if I hadn't been sickened by the thought of what sort of diseases might crawl within his tough flesh. He had the biggest, fattest, hardest rump I’ve ever seen on a pig, topped with flakey black skin, coarse hairs, all saturated in a cloud of hog halitosis.
Julie had been told that Pig-pig belonged to a miniature variety of pig and that he wouldn't get big. But man, did this pig get BIG. If he was standing in a doorway staring you down, his width filled the doorframe. You would have to high-jump over a side bulge of his belly (which I would never attempt, due to his vicious persona – more about that later) if you needed to escape. He was about as long as a love-seat sofa. But that’s where his commonality with ‘love’ ended. He could have been useful as a broom, but his sparely-haired belly only narrowly missed contact with the ground. I'm not sure how his thin, stumpy legs carried that load without snapping.
Pig-pig may have had an excuse for his poor adult behavior. As a piglet, Pig-Pig tried to commit suicide. He knocked a bottle of Advil off the bathroom counter and proceeded, not only to crunch through the child-resistant packaging and eat most of the plastic bottle, but also to snuffle up all the tasty tablets inside. When Julie came home from work, he was lying on his side, wheezing. Upon further investigation, she discovered the saliva-encrusted remnants of the Advil container, and rushed him to the vet, 911-style. He was still a cute piglet at that point, so she didn’t need a fork lift truck to move him as would be necessary some years later.
According to the vet, Pig-pig had 50-50 chance of survival. By this time, Julie was completely in love with her little lap-pig, but still needed some time to think before agreeing to the $4000 vet bill which might – or might not – preserve his life. In the end, she didn't have the heart to give up on him, and her guilt for his hardships was unbearable. In due course, Julie was sitting next to his infant incubator, hand-feeding him chunks of raw tomato, which she declared, with tear-soaked, adoring eyes and wobbling lower lip, was his favorite food.
Needless to say, Pig-pig made it through his ordeal alive, but from that day forth, he was a changed pig. The liver damage, caused by the suicide attempt meant he could no longer hold his bladder too well. So, while Julie's house began to smell more like an ammonia-filled pig sty every day, her and Pig-pig’s love for each other grew tenfold. It was clear that Pig adored Julie. As he got too big to snuggle on her lap, he satisfied himself by lying on the sofa and resting his head on her lap, while she scratched behind his ears. Everyone else sat as far away as possible. When he got too fat and too heavy to lift himself onto the sofa, he would sit on the floor and put his chin up on her knee. It was at this point in his obesity that I had the pleasure of meeting him. Pig-pig didn't have the same affection for anyone else that he did for Julie. He tolerated Julie's husband, Pete, accepting him as a fellow pig, lower on the pig hierarchy. But, upon any other person that dared to enter his sty, Pig-pig declared a silent war. Well, not silent. Honks and snorts were abundant. If he had it his way, it would be him and Julie and a trough of tomato salsa forever, alone.
And so it was that I was sitting on the sofa, happily catching up on lost time with Julie. I heard him first. It was a grunt. More like a fog horn than an animal noise. (On what planet did Old McDonald come up with the cute "oink" sound?) This was a shock in itself as we were nowhere near a farm nor a shipping dock. I had, at that point, forgotten that Julie had a pig, much less a pig living in her living room. I looked into the direction of the noise and, at first I didn’t see him. Just a tower of brown fluffy blankets piled high. But then the pile of blankets moved – they shook, shuddered and trembled as if the earth was quaking underneath them. Underneath, Pig was struggling to lift himself to his grand old porkin' size. Each movement was accompanied by a honk or a snort. It sounded like a drowning ogre with a bad case of arthritis. Then, after a couple of steps from under his fluffly brown blankets, a huge black snout, two peg legs and two piggy eyes emerged.
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed, and laughed nervously.
Pig-pig’s reputation proceeded him, but I did attempt to approach him in a gesture of friendship. After all, I love animals, and they love me - maybe he’d take a liking to me. A series of louder grunts and head-shaking stopped me in my tracks. It was obvious he was saying "Stand Back, Imposter". Julie giggled, she found it adorable, no doubt.
“Is he friendly?” I asked. Of course, I'd heard he wasn't, but I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Julie got up, strode over and scratched Pig-pig’s head, and in baby-talk, sing-sung, “Yes, he is, isn't he, Pig-Pig? You very fwiendly.” Pig honked back at her in agreement…or in disagreement…I’m not sure as I can’t translate Pig-lish, but there was a definite mixture of emotions welling up in the animal. I could tell he enjoyed momma’s scratching, but he still held me fixed in his beady eyes. I decided to back off. Give him time, I reasoned.
Meanwhile, Julie and I continued catching up and Pig-pig continued standing and staring at me, still half covered in fluffy brown blankets. It could have been a moment from a horror film, but Pig-pig was, after all, Family. I soon forgot he was even there.
Suddenly, out the corner of my eye, I saw a giant flash of brown-and-black. It took a running sprint towards me, full force, honking like a pig at war. I screamed and yanked my feet up from the floor, jumping up onto cushions at the back of the sofa. My heartbeat tripled. I expected him to dive up onto the sofa and attack me ferociously. Luckily, Pig-pig's snout stopped short at where my feet had been, honking his dissatisfaction at having missed out on a tasty treat – my unsuspecting toes.
“Julie! Save me!” I screamed.
Julie laughed, “He's just saying hello!” She's laughing her head off, clearly in denial that she has fallen in love with a sadistic monster.
“Get him away!” I plead.
As she cajoles him back to his piggy bed, she's still chuckling. I start to giggle too, I guess it was kind of funny. But only because I'd moved my feet in time.
That night, I slept on the sofa - with Pig-pig only a few feet away, waking me up with a cacophony of nighttime snorts and grumbles. Every time I moved to get comfortable, he gave an extra loud honk - as if I were disturbing him. I had tucked my hands under my pillow, careful not to leave any tempting, hanging appendages within Pig-pig’s reach. I was thankful Pig-pig was too fat to get up on the sofa. But lying there awake, as still as a corpse in a coffin, I realized how thirsty I was. I didn’t really want to get up, but the more I tried to ignore the thirst, the more intense it got. Finally, I heard Pig-Pig's snorting turn rhythmically into snores.
So I dragged myself, sleepily, and as silently as I could, into the kitchen. As I tip-toed past him, his snores turned silent, followed by his huge hallmark honk. Damn it, I had woken him up and I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t happy about my midnight movements.
Having poured myself some water and quenched my ravenous thirst, I turned around, only to see two piggy eyes, glinting in the moonlight, at the kitchen door, blocking my exit. Funny how he could be so silent when he wanted to. Once we locked eyes, he started up his threatening noises again. We stood there, staring each other down, while I tried to think about a plan of action. It was just me, him and the darkness now, in a midnight duel of sorts.
“Shoo! Shoo!” I whispered, waving my hand at him. I really wanted to get back to the safety of the sofa, but whenever I took a step towards this big beast, he grunted louder. I didn't put it past him to take a chunk out of my leg – I'd glimpsed his sharp teeth during his practice run earlier. I tried shouting, quietly at first. “Julie!” Then louder, “JUUULIIEEE!” Finally, Pete came out and rescued me. He nudged Pig out the way with his knee, and Pig resentfully obliged, but not without a menacing honk that said, “I’ll get you later.”
As I settled back to sleep, and Pig-pig settled back down into his fluffy blankets - which incidentally were fluffier than the tread-bare, hand-me-down sheets that I was trying to find comfort in - I made a mental note to myself to spend tomorrow night at my mum's house.
I found out later that year that I’d made a clean escape…
My dad came to visit for Christmas from England and stayed at Julie’s house.
Pig-pig, probably still dreaming about the taste of my toes that he’d been cheated out of, attempted the same exact techniques on my dad. This time, Pig-pig got lucky. Dad is not as young, quick and nimble as me. Pig-pigs yellow, rotten teeth sunk deeply into my dad’s ankle, causing a gushing forth of blood. It was clear that it was no longer Julie and Pete’s house. This was Pig-pig’s house.
It also turned out that Pig-pig was a creature of habit. Just like he did to me, he cornered my dad in the kitchen when Julie and Pete were out at work. Dad, who has a violent streak anyway and had already been wounded in one battle with Pig-pig, took a course of action that I would only have dreamed of.
Dad whacked Pig-pig over the head with a Teflon frying pan. Pig-Pig’s tooth flew out of his mouth and skid across the floor. Pig-pig oinked and ran away. Dad threw the evidence in the trash can and exited the kitchen with his glass of water.
“Bloody, bastard pig,” said my Dad.
Julie did her best to keep Dad and Pig-pig separate from that point on. Funny that she felt more concern for Pig-pig’s lost tooth, than my dad’s ankle. But I suppose even I would say Pig-pig is slightly cuter than our dad.
When Julie moved into her first-owned house, she started keeping Big-Big Pig-Pig in a shed/outside in the garden. He was no longer a house pig. Living in the garden only served to make Pig-pig even more repulsive. Flies began buzzing around his coarse-haired back. Once he escaped into the neighbor’s garden and three people had to push his stubborn behind to get him home.
Today, Pig-pig lives in a pig sanctuary, after Julie sold her house and left California. All I can say is, those other sanctuary pigs should watch their hooves. It ain't no sanctuary any more. Life with Pig-pig is a fate much more terrifying than becoming bacon.
Some funny stories! I myself have a piglet! but she is still rather tiny, and not aggressive! I keep reading stories about pigs turning bad :/ It does not put my mind at ease! aha
ReplyDeleteChina, I hope your piglet grew up to be a piggy princess and not a big bacon bandit! Have you heard Esther the Wonder Pig? Some pretty funny piggy owners:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/estherthewonderpig/