I have always wanted a pet pig. Not one of those anemic pot-bellied things, but a full-fledged, full-fleshed oinker. But after reading "The Good Good Pig" by Sy Montgomery, I'm having second thoughts. Not because her runt-made-good Christopher Hogwood wasn't impossibly lovable (even when he grew to 700 pounds), but because of my conclusion: It takes a village to raise a pig. A community full of people who, with good nature, will guide the pig back home when it inevitably manages to escape. One in which a local could be counted on in a pinch to tend it when you had to be away.
It would be additional icing on the cake if where we lived was like Montgomery's rural town in New Hampshire, where everyone, including the preacher, firemen, restaurateurs, neighbors and their children voluntarily and enthusiastically saved up a wide variety of delicious leftover morsels (pork-free, of course) to share with my four-hoofed family member. And more the better if kids from miles around, as in the case of Christopher, begged to come over for "Pig Spa," wherein we would lather up the beastie, brush its tail, scratch its belly and anoint its skin with emollients.
Finally, it would be a cosmically lucky pig-lover indeed whose friends and neighbors would share in the grief, as did Montgomery's, when the pig passed over into the next world. When Chris died at age 14, these lovely people called, wrote, sent flowers, brought food and held her hands, and declared that they felt richer for having been a part of Christopher's life.
2 comments:
I don't know that I would consider it strange that you would want a pig. if we lived in the country, i want to have a goat. They can keep the grass and weeds trimmed, fertilize things and serve as very good watch dogs. My wife thinks I am crazy, but......
Oooo. A goat would be cool too. But don't they like to climb all over things?
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