Some Pig

There is a distinct, low-to-the-ground magic to the farm section of a childhood zoo. While everyone else rushed toward the grand spectacle of the bears or the leopards, my loyalty was always rooted firmly at the wooden pens of the Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.

Compared to the other towering livestock of the farmyard (very tall horses, very tall cebu, very grumpy goats) pot-bellied pigs offered something delightfully accessible. They stayed manageable—for adult pigs, anyway. This breed of pig tends to cap out at about 100 pounds, and they are roughly knee-height: a scale a small child could actually process. I loved everything about their construction: the coarse, scratchy black bristles that felt like a worn broom head beneath your palms, the deep, accordion-fold wrinkles set into their delightfully serious faces, and the endless, rhythm-keeping swish-swish of their tails as they navigated their pen.

They were creatures of pure sensory joy and singular focus. If you stood by the enclosure long enough, you’d find that they were absolute masters of multitasking. A pig could have its moist, snuffly nose thoroughly invested in the trough, searching out every last grain of food, while simultaneously leaning the full weight of its body against the wooden fence to accept affection. They loved scritches right behind the ears or at the top of their shoulders. If you reached your little pair of six-year-old hands through the slats, they would press into the contact with deep contentment, never once interrupting the crucial work of eating. A massage and a meal, at the same time? Now that’s living well - high off the hog, you might say.

Like most kids, my idea of a pig was initially shaped by storybooks and cinema, in addition to those pig-centric trips to the zoo. I loved Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, with his little pink jumper and wiggly, nervous ears. I had (and still have) an excellent picture book about pigs called All Pigs are Beautiful, a sentiment to which I still adhere. I adored the film Babe, and watched it till the my parents went a bit mad. But it was likely at that very zoo farm where the gentle illusion of the Hollywood pig dissolved for me. Babe and Wilbur were, at my best guess, Chester Whites—and those pigs start out as adorable pink babies with their dark, limpid eyes and impossibly long eyelashes and fine pink ears that glow when light shines through them. But they don’t stay little pink babies for long. They quickly grow into 700- or 800-pound hulking, substantial animals. Seeing full-grown commercial breeds up close brings a sudden, practical realization: these are massive, formidable farm animals, not creatures you could ever imagine cozying up to on the sofa like a lap-dog.

And, despite the rather horrible market for ‘teacup pigs’ as a sort of pink version of a puppy, pigs do not make great house pets. They experience the world through their noses, and those noses are powerful: they are designed to root up food, shovel bedding, and corral their young. A pig will happily turn a phone book into a heap of shredded paper or tear up and spread around a bale of hay as their bed, and they are prone to nosing, ripping, digging, shredding, chewing, and generally destroying, the surfaces of their environment: it’s how they find food. They’re not dirty though, despite the stereotype. They wallow in mud to protect their skin from bugs and the sun, because pigs can get sunburnt, just like humans. Actually, we have rather a lot in common with pigs: as Winston Churchill once said, “A dog will look up to you; a cat will look down on you; a pig will look a man right in the eye and see his equal.” Wise words. They are monogastric omnivores (one-stomached everything-eaters) with digestive systems very similar to those of humans. They can basically eat what we eat, which is why people have kept them as part of waste management systems for so long - they’ll happily eat our food scraps, as Wilbur does throughout this novel. And pigs, like people - okay, most people - are extraordinarily intelligent. You cannot leave a pig in a barren environment and expect it not to go a bit crazy. Pigs left without proper and sufficient enrichment get frustrated and violent: if they do not have appropriate things to nuzzle, nose through, and chew on, they will chew on themselves and each other - and a pig’s bite hurts. All this to say that, just like a thousand-pound cow or horse, or indeed any domesticated animal, pigs belong in environments suited to their needs: a paddock or field with lots of interesting smells and plants and hay and toys to explore, and other pigs about to have a good circle of friends. They do not belong in a house as a pet like a dog or cat, and there is no such thing as a ‘teacup pig’ - that’s just a piglet, who will no doubt grow into something quite substantial with time.

One of the few exceptions to this ‘pigs are generally giant’ rule is, as mentioned, the pot-bellied pig, like those charming little (well, for a pig) piggies on the farm at the zoo. I loved pigs then, and I love them still—for their stubborn focus, their absurd seriousness, for the ways their share so much of our nature, and for the memory of the texture of coarse black bristles under small, eager hands.