Me, my grandma and Oreo, my Hampshire pig. Circa. 2005.
If you’re wondering how we ended up with a pig, one of my friends was given him by her aunt as a gag gift on her 4th birthday. This was obviously intended to upset her mom, who was, no offense intended, a neat freak. The baby piggy sat in a cold cardboard box on their porch the entire rest of her birthday party. My mom is a kitten rescuer and had no experience with pigs or knowledge of how big Hampshire pigs get (huge meat breed, 550 to 750 pounds) but couldn’t bear the thought of this tiny piglet being left in the cold. So she took him with us when she left.
He was an exceptional pig with a fantastic piggy personality. He stayed with us for a year and a half until he officially outgrew his enclosure and became a breeding boar at a local farm (this is not a “we sent him to a farm upstate” fairy tale, we saw him often afterwards and he escaped and returned at one point). He liked eating my mom’s tulips, he tucked himself in bed under his blanket every night and by the time he was rehomed, he had somehow figured out how to open doors and let himself in the house. He was clever, dramatic, extremely stubborn and very affectionate.
Don’t give animals as gag gifts, especially intelligent, beautiful, huge creatures.
