My pet pig Honk

One cold, rainy day, my father surprised me with a tiny bundle of joy.  He was the runt of a litter of eleven, and had all but given up the fight to stay alive.  As his little body grew thinner and all his energy drained away with the struggle to find a teat, so he found himself systematically squeezed out of the running by his bigger, sturdier siblings.  This tiny, icy cold, pink, limp body was put into my hands, and I had to do the best I could to firstly keep him alive, and secondly to get him to thrive.

I found an old shoe box and wrapping him in a piece of cloth, laid him in it.  The warmest place I could find was behind the coal stove in the kitchen.  There happened to be a gap between the stove and the wall, and this is where I lay him down.

To all our surprise he survived, and so started my love affair with Honk, my gorgeous, pink pig.  I used to feed him on milk which he drank out of a lemonade bottle with a teat at the end of it.  For me, it was far better than any doll I had ever had.  This was a warm, living, interacting human pig!

We did everything together.  He followed me around like a faithful dog.  When I called his name he came running to get his bottle.  He was part of the family and would run in and out of the kitchen at will.  As he grew bigger and stronger, he quickly graduated to vegetable peelings and milk slurped out of a bucket.  I loved my pig and it was one of the happiest times in my life.  He was my friend and soul pig! 

Unfortunetely, life I have found, is very often not all that it's cracked up to be, and that fateful day arrived when my father broke the sad news to me that Honk had to join his brothers and sisters in the "long walk" to the Escort bacon factory.  I was heartbroken!

One of the things about living on a farm, is that one learns to become fairly resilient from an early age.  I suppose I was slowing learning too, that nothing is forever, and that goodbyes always tear one's heart apart more than just a little.