It is with a worn out spirit but a clean conscious I let you know that Big Pig will not be staying with Apifera.
As charming and magnificent a creature as she is, my first responsibility is to the farm's health and the Misfit's safety. Big Pig and I have talked, she holds no grudge. And I hold no grudge against her for simply being...a 500# pig who continued to do 500# pig things. I have spent almost $1,000 and put so much time and energy into making, remaking, fixing, refixing - all the time not giving up. Some of you might know - I am not a quitter, and I am very loyal to those I give my word to. But I also know the freedom that comes from admitting I made a mistake, or need to change directions.
In the last week Big Pig showed me she was not going to fit into the scheme of things here, and the last straw came when she tossed Rosie aside like a feather - she was not being mean, she was being Big Pig. Each day something happened to make me reconsider her living here, including the day she pushed through the extra plywood I put up
to keep her from ruining a stall door, and in so doing she nearly knocked me down, under the plywood, and was on her way to walking over it with me under it.
I'm too young to die.
Always containing her in her spacious paddock was an option, but the money, time, and energy drain - to fix and refix, and worry of the consequences if she did get out into the barnyard - was what helped me come to my decision.
Big Pig has given me many gifts in her short month here - for one, I was able to experience this creature, in all her pig glory. I will never, ever forget her, or her eyelashes, or her quite grunts that meant, "What are ya' doing? Wanna hang out?" , to her manic grunts and foaming at the mouth that meant, "Come on, feed me, now, I am PIG!"
But the biggest gift she has given me is to put me and my open heart back on the Apifera track - that my goal is to help old, crippled, special need creatures or short term hospice cases. And a 500# healthy three year old pig does not fit into that master plan.
Big Pig will be back with her very good and caring former owners. Some of you might offer optional solutions to returning her there, or ways to keep her here, but I do not want to hear them and won't respond to them.
I will not talk Big Pig again. But she will appear in my art or stories in different ways, I suspect. She has made a huge impact on me. Her destruction here has also made a huge impact on me.
But it is a fact, Big Pig and I have a silent agreement.
