Savage Snout: Encounters of the Pot-bellied Kind

1: Hoofs

My sister got a pig.  Not a puppy or a kitten. Not even a hamster or a rabbit. No, her pet has to have hooves. Or hoofs, as I like to say. Because whoever invented the English language was smoking poppies when they decided that hooves, feet and teeth were acceptable alternatives for hoofs, tooths and foots. But I'm only in active protest of 'hoofs'. It makes the horny, calloused, oversized toenails sound cute, and hoofed animals can always use 'cute' PR. We torture and butcher most of the Hoofys (hoofies? Why? Cuz the Opium's strong? Good enough.) If Julie had masked ninja'd it into a high security slaughter factory aka "farm" and escaped with a bullet in one arm and a lonely, mother-torn piglet under the other, I might have been impressed. But Julie bought her pig. On Craigslist.

Many of us have squawked, "Aww, I want a [insert exotic pet-let]!" after watching a viral video – maybe it's a strangely-smiling two-toed sloth to hang off your forearm, or a marmoset monkey, searching for nits in your hair, or a chimpanzee that becomes a beloved part of the family for 20 years...then, with its bare hands, reaches into your face one Wednesday afternoon in winter to pull out your blood-drowned brain. (Disclaimer: this refers to one or two news stories...I am NOT into stereotyping Chimps.) The majority of us have goldfish memory when the thirty-second YouTube clip ends. We circle back around to the "new" side of our fishbowl and doggy paddle back into our daily lives. 

Not Julie. Julie announced her motherhood status with a black-haired Vietnamese "miniature" pot-bellied piglet, sent by Fed-ex in a zip-log bag. She lost all claims to creativity by naming him Pig-Pig. Not Ham-bugger, not Boar-Butt, not Baby Back Ribs, but Pig-pig. Given that he was the only Pig in the district, he got away with his name.

"He's a 'teacup' pig," she gushed over the phone "A Vietnamese pot-belly" then tried to get the thing to talk/snort to me. "Say hello to your Auntie Sera." I waited for Mrs. Doolittle to squeeze some kind of porcine message out of Babe.

"All I can hear are your slurping kissy sounds. You're sucking on his snotty little nose, aren't you?"

"His snout," she corrected. "And it's vewy cute and tiny. He's a vewy shy little piglet. Aren't you, Pig Pig?"

"Remember how much you loved 'pork scratchings' though? I couldn't eat them after you said the long spikey parts were bits of pig skin that made it into the bag with unplucked hair. Ugh," I shuddered at the memory. "But you said those hairy bits were your favorite."

"Mmm-yum...Pig would love pork scratchings. Bacon is your favorite though – isn't it, Pig-Pig?"

"You feed him bacon?! That's...involuntary cannibalism!"

"Yes, but also delicious. And nutritious."

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