pig love
For several years, I’ve dreamed of pigs. I can’t remember now, how I started to think about them so much, or how my friend Daisy the pig came into my head. I remember I thought up a little rhyming poem about a pig who lived in a terrible dark, noisy, smelly barn, and then she magically grew wings one night and flew away to a little pink cottage with a bathtub, and the last line was “and every morning she woke up, smelling like a rose.” That’s the beginning I remember.
Soon after, I wrote a very loooonng story about Daisy and then I started drawing and painting her and sculpting her from cotton, and then there came Harriet the pig and her chicken friend Florence, and many many iterations of flying pigs and piglets….. but I’d begun to worry lately, that perhaps I wouldn’t like a real pig so much as the pigs I’ve invented. And so when we discovered two pigs nearby who really needed a new home, and we talked about whether we could provide that for them, I had misgivings beyond those of the resources it would take to keep them. I wondered if I would actually like them, much less love them.
Our first meeting with the pigs didn’t settle my fears. Rudy was much bigger than I’d imagined he would be - and hairy - and well, quite masculine, which I realize I’m using pejoratively, but maybe you know what I mean. He was nothing like the dress-wearing piggies I’d been dreaming of. Mabel was smaller and less intimidating, but I admit I didn’t immediately fall in love. I really didn’t, and that bothered me for several days, even as we prepared a place for them and I asked for your help in funding the expense of their care. I kept thinking of Rudy and his long tusks and big bulky body and how I was afraid he might snap my fingers when I fed him the treats he received for sitting. But one image that kept coming back to me was how when he sat for his treat, his face upturned and waiting, he had smiled. And it was a real smile, a sweet smile. He was not a pretty pig like the ones I’d painted, but he was sweet. I really believed he was, tusks and manliness and all.
And I was right. I knew, after their first few hours here, that I needn’t have worried about liking or loving them. Like Lilly goat did when we brought her here two years ago, they made the place seem more like a home - they fit into the family just like a piece that was missing. I was so relieved, and so happy we decided to put their pen next to the kitty coop, so that I could hear their grunting and talk to them from the garden. After just a few days, I felt like we’d always kept pigs. I loved the pigs. I loved REAL pigs, Rudy and Mabel pig. And then we sent them off to the vet, thinking we were being responsible to take care of some of the issues right away - namely, that Rudy needed to be neutered and have his tusks trimmed, and Mabel’s feet needed trimmed. I really didn’t have any misgivings.
Sometime around midday, I gather our rabbit Sniffles a bouquet of fresh things to eat. I was coming back to the house with my little forage when I noticed a great blue heron flying over the barn. We see herons fairly often, but not usually right over the farm, and this one was flying towards me, low, so low I could see the dark stripe over its eye. I watched it flap its wings slowly, slowly, glide in a half circle, and land in the top of the oak tree behind the garage. I stood still, watching it, wondering what it might be doing here in the middle of the day, when normally we only see them in the evenings, at a distance, flying back to their nests. It perched for a minute or maybe two, then lifted its wings and flew off towards the creek, trailing its ungainly legs beneath it.
In the house, Dave had happened to see the heron, too, as he passed an upstairs window. I remarked that I thought it was strange, maybe an omen - and he laughed and accused me of being superstitious. I don’t know if I am, really. I think I tend to look for symbols, something that started when I began writing poetry and making art - symbols are helpful, because they can communicate things without extra words - and they add meaning and order in what is otherwise a chaotic and random world.
Rudy didn’t come out of sedation like he should have. Six hours after his surgery, he was still unconscious and the veterinarian was not very optimistic about his chances. We were shocked, heartsick that we’d not realized what sort of risk we were taking with his life. We had to decide if we would leave him overnight at the clinic or bring him home, which might not be possible if he didn’t rouse. Thankfully, he did - he seemed to know Dave’s voice and after a few hours of sitting with him and talking to him and shaking him awake, Dave managed to half-lift him into the trailer and bring him and Mabel home. It was a long and terrible night.
I didn’t want to go out in the morning - I was terrified of what I’d find. Finally, I forced myself out the door and was greeted by the sound of Mabel’s grunting, and as I squinted into the shade of their pen, I could see him - Rudy - standing up, his tail wagging back and forth. In the grass of the orchard, was this path through the dew. I don’t know what made it - of course my imagination invented a pig spirit or fairy who visits pigs in trouble and who must have come to be with Rudy in the night. Like the heron, I needed it to be a sign.
Rudy was up that morning, but he was far from his usual self, and as the day went on, I became more and more concerned because he simply wouldn’t eat, and drank very little. In many cases where the sedation continues, the animal regains consciousness but because they can’t be made to eat or drink, they eventually shut down.
In the evening, a little disturbance came through, bringing a few rain clouds without rain, and also a rainbow. Without that rainbow, I think I would have despaired - how long can a pig survive on a few vegan cheesy puffs? - and about an hour later, we had success - Rudy ate his pan of oatmeal with banana slices and drank some water and I think I felt like Noah must have when the dove returned with the olive branch - that the world wasn’t ending, that there was a promise of better days to come. The next morning, he was waiting for me at his empty food dish.
Every evening, just as it’s getting dark, Dave tucks Celie hen under his arm and carries her down to the barn. The other hens are already at roost on their perch below the window. The barn fan roars and they whistle and hum, shifting on their perch and panting with open beaks. Celie trills quietly, one gold eye fixed on her protector as he shuts the coop door.
I can’t explain why it is some animals immediately find a place in your heart. It just happens sometimes. Old Lilly goat, our donkey Tru, and Celie the hen - they have something about them, maybe the way they hold you with their gaze, an openness to their presence, a way of bringing you into the moment with them. Stop a moment with me, they seem to say, looking into your eyes.
Grandma always planted “Heavenly Blue” morning glories. In her later years, my mom or my sister or I would be delegated to plant out the precious seeds. Then there was the week or two of waiting to see if they would sprout - Grandma calling to despair that she wouldn’t have her heavenly blues this year - and then the relief when they did, eventually, come up. I’m not sure how they came to be so significant to her, there is no story of her mother or grandmother always keeping them. Perhaps it was the nothing more than the ritual of it. Procuring the seed each spring, delegating one of the family to plant them below the special trellis, waiting for them to germinate, and then making sure they were watered and cared for until they flowered in August and September, her birth month.
The other day Nettie wanted to paint and as I was squeezing the paints out for her, I found myself saying “Do you want some blue for the sky?” A silly thing to ask, really, since I had no idea what she was going to paint, and whether or not a sky was involved, much less if she wanted it to be blue. But we’re conditioned, aren’t we? Even though I regularly create and make art, I still fall into the trap of seeing and presenting the world a certain way: blue sky, white clouds, green grass…as if that was the only experience of everything nature does, as if that was all the world held for anyone.
Why is the sky blue? Nettie’s asked me this lots of times. My answer is amorphous. I know it has to do with the atmosphere, the gasses somehow reflect blue. We learn the real answer this month from her Highlights magazine, which says that when the sun’s light strikes nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, blue light is scattered, but violet light is scattered even more - so the sky should look violet, all things being equal. Of course things aren’t - equal, that is - our eyes can’t see violet light as well as blue - so perhaps the sky IS violet and our human eyes simply aren’t able to recognize it that way.
Chicken’s eyes are tetrachromatic - they have four cones that allow them to see red, blue, green, and ultraviolet light - meaning they can see many more colors and shades of colors than humans can. Is Celie’s sky violet? I hope it might be.
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