Happy Birthday little piggy

Natsu means "summer" in Japanese....and he has been my summer child for seven human years.

We almost didn’t bring him home.

After talking to Sally-the-pig-lady at the Blanford Fair and being charmed by her tiny “teacup” pig, we recognized that this woman knew her pigs and that she was honest. Salt of the Earth honest. She wasn’t trying to sell people farm piglets who would eventually grow into three hundred pound behemoths. She had been raising pigs her entire life, and when she said that her pigs were actual mini’s and well under a hundred pounds full-grown, it was the truth. The definition of a “mini pig” is anything up to four hundred pounds, believe it or not….well beyond the size of anything normal people consider mini. We made plans to bring our daughter up to her farm in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts to get a piglet mid-week. We were committed animal parents, with three dogs, four cats and two ferrets….and I had always wanted a pig. For my whole life, every time I’ve ever driven through farm country, I’ve always been on the lookout for them, and I’ve always stopped to say hello. Their intelligence, curiosity and endurance, not to mention their visual appeal, has made them my favorite animal. It seemed like the timing was perfect to get one.

This is one of my favorite internet pictures. I’ve no idea who the little boy is, or what pig he is kissing….but if I had been in his shoes, that would have been me in a heartbeat.

We arrived at Sally’s place early Tuesday evening, very excited. My fiance and I, with our sixteen year old daughter were prepared to meet the two piglets Sally had available and choose one to bring one home with us.

They were both approximately eleven weeks old; one was black and the other was white, and they were currently being raised in a box inside the house. Sally lifted up the white one; a girl. People generally have the impression that most pigs are pink; this is because their pinkish skin is visible beneath very sparse white fur. She was frozen in silent fear, and just quivered in Sally’s arms while we pet her. Then Sally lifted up Natsu. He was hollaring from the second her hands closed around him, and proceeded to immediately shit all down the front of her scrubs.

While Sally held him against her, wiggling, shitting and screaming, she was earnestly telling us all about the great responsibility that pig-ownership brings without batting an eyelash; somehow managing to project calmly above the unbelievable racket that he was making. She explained how most people acquire little piglets without any idea how high-maintenance they are. Little pigs can be delicate; you have to be very careful about their diets, and not overfeed them…..pigs don’t reach full maturity until they are about five years old, and they continue to grow in size until that time. She became very indignant as she described how so many people abandon their pets after they get too big to handle, and far too many pigs end up going to slaughter before their fifth birthdays because owners didn’t bother to educate themselves about what they were getting themselves into. And pigs and dogs should NEVER be allowed to be together unsupervised; dogs are pack animals and pigs are herd animals, and they do not speak the same language.

Dogs get very upset and annoyed at the way that pigs constantly test them to see who is in charge at any given moment, and eventually dogs lose their temper and snap; literally, which never works out well for the pig. Pigs are by nature very destructive; a little piggy snout can take a house apart. Sally chuckled as she recounted the story of how one lady’s pig had detected a drop of food spilled on a wooden floorboard in her kitchen, and he ended up devouring the wood trying to get it. People who leave their pet pigs roaming the house while they go off to work often come home to find entire rooms of wallpaper hanging in strips, and their vinyl floor tiles snout-shredded.

My daughter just stood here blinking like a deer in headlights, overwhelmed by the noise and all that Sally was saying, and tears began to run down her face. Natsu just opened his tiny mouth and screeched louder. As Sally went to bring both the piglets back inside, Athena said hoarsely, “mom, I don’t think I can handle a pig….what if he ends up dying?”

Sadly, we told Sally that we would not be able to take a pig home, after all. She merely nodded sagely, and said, “okay, well…if you change your mind, let me know.” I was pretty sure that Sally never pulled any punches, and that she was always very up-front because she didn’t want people to be under any illusions about just how much work a pet pig really is. Her forthrightness had certainly scared my daughter.

I couldn’t stop seeing that tiny, screeching, wriggling and shitting little pig; his little brown eyes were so shiny, his snout so stubby and adorable. I didn’t say a word, or try to convince Athena otherwise, and neither did my fiance; we just let her think on it. And the next morning she came down the stairs and said very decisively, “mom, we need to get him.” For some reason, when I called Sally at 8:30 a.m. to tell her we were coming to get the little black pig that day after work, I had the impression that she wasn’t a bit surprised.

Sure enough, he was a handful and it was amazing how much energy he had. Our other animals didn’t quite know what to make of this strange little creature, but as he was a baby, the dogs didn’t mind him. The cats just stayed out of his way. We weren’t sure whether the ferrets would think of him as a potential food source, so we didn’t even introduct them.

The first time he raced from the living room into the kitchen and spun around in a circle making a sound that was like a deep “woof”, I looked at my fiance in surprise and said, “wait, did he just BARK?” Yes, pigs do bark, just like dogs. And the spinning in a circle, barking like a maniac is something that they do when they’re extremely happy, it’s called having “the spinnies”.

Never in my life had I ever met a creature more food-focused; he begged shamelessly, and no one was a stranger. By the time he was five months old, he was used to riding around in the car wearing a harnass with a leash, meeting people. We brought him to the yearly Christmas around the Common in North Brookfield, where people gave him spoonfulls of their clam chowder and bites of cornbread, and praised his “soulful eyes”. He even met a pot-bellied pig who lived in a shed beside her owners’ house on a side street near the center of town. As the seasons changed and summer brought the antique car shows and seasonal opening of drive-through ice cream and hot-dog stands, Natsu became very well known to many people from the surrounding towns. He scored so many treats that it was unbelievable. Often, the first thing people would say as they did a double-take and focused on a little black animal wearing a bright red harnass with matching leash was “that’s NOT a dog!!”

Oh no….definitely not a dog. And he never slept on our bed like a dog would, either, but would have to burrow under the covers beside us every night. We got used to sleeping uncomfortably hot because he was like a mini-furnace, and perpetually itchy from the wiry little hairs that he shed all over the sheets and that we could never seem to get rid of.

You couldn’t let him out of your sight for a moment, and if you noticed that he was quiet for a while….that was a very bad sign. One Sunday morningI , when he was about six months old, I thought he was resting on his pile of blankets beneath the kitchen table, so I went into the library to rearrange my books and when I checked on him five minutes later, he was not there. I found him in the corner between the pantry closet and the refrigerator with a two pound tin of Belgian chocolate wafer cookies that the cat had apparently knocked off of the top of the fridge. Half the cookies were already gone, and he was working on the rest, but with far less speed than normal (he generally inhales food). Of course I freaked out, snatching him and calling Rose, our farm vet. “Natsu just ate a pound of chocolate wafer cookies!” A pound was a lot for a creature who only weighed sixteen pounds.

She was struggling not to laugh as she told me that there must have been something in the air; she had just had a conversation with another pig parent, whose little pig had gotten into a box of chocolate frosted cupcakes and eaten all of them. “Give him Mylanta or something similar to that, and don’t worry. He will be fine by tomorrow.” She was right, of course. He lay in our bed for the rest of the day and night groaning, but the following morning he was up and ready for his next meal, as predicted. That Sunday was really the only time in recorded history that Natsu was not hungry!

The bigger he got, the less the dogs appreciated him…and the more that the cats did. Eventually, I saw exactly what Sally had been talking about happening before my eyes; pigs are always a little bit nervous about who is supposed to be in charge of the herd, so they challenge other animals by pushing them around. They expect that the alpha will put them quickly in their place, and then they can relax….but if that doesn’t happen, they become more nervous because they think that it means they are the ones that are supposed to be in charge. Natsu would worry the dogs; snout them, and charge them, constantly pushing them around…..and the dogs would just give him a side-eye and slink away. Sometimes Maggie and Jake would bare their teeth, and that was a huge sign that the dynamics were shifting. I was very careful to keep them from being in close quarters after that, and certainly never alone together.

My little boy was about two and half human years old in this picture; a magnificent young prince. Rusty, the ginger cat, was his new bff while Jake, the cattle dog/bloodhound kept himself in the periphery. This was how things progressed until all three of my dogs passed, within eight months of each other and only the cats, ferrets and pigs remained.

Five more years have gone by, and a great deal has changed. Natsu became fully mature and maxed out at about eighty pounds. I gave the little house to my niece and her man so that they would have a safe little place to start a family during covid, and moved us to my family’s land with the intention of building a new house on my dedicated piece of property that spans thirty acres of woods here on Hampshire county. That hasn’t happened yet, but it will eventually. Meanwhile, Natsu moved outside to become a real pig; trading blankets for hay bales, and he has never been happier. He now has two brothers from other mothers, but they all look very much alike. First came Draco, in 2020…

.And then, in October of 2022, Hawggy joined the family.

Sometimes they squabble and fight, like siblings do…..but at the end of the day, life is good and they have peace.

And today, on my summer pig’s seventh birthday, may all the other pigs in the world also find peace. Happy Birthday, Natsu.

I will stop at nothing to make sure that you have many, many more Happy Birthdays.