Books : Oink : Excerpts

4
Size Matters

Shortly after Emma emailed me the image of two pigs on a twig, the offensive campaign unrolled.

“Kids,” she began on her return from work, showing them the picture she had printed off. “How would you feel about getting a mini-pig? They’ve been especially bred to be as teeny tiny as possible.”

“Is this wise?” I asked as the children cooed collectively. “Shouldn’t you wait a while and see if they do a nano version?”

“Any smaller and we’d risk losing it!” she declared happily. With her enthusiasm in full effect, Emma made way for the children as they gathered around the picture. “This is the perfect size for us.”

I refused to be railroaded. Previously, I’d just let my wife get on with it, but not this time.

“Emma,” I said patiently. “We’ve already made the mistake of taking on animals with the potential to eat one another. Just look at the efforts we have to make to keep the dog from the cat and the cat from the rabbits. Inviting a little pig into the family wouldn’t just be adding to the pet count. You’d be increasing our personal food chain.”

“We’ve never had an incident,” she countered.

“At a cost.” I gestured at the dog in the boot room. She was watching us through the bars of the child gate. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like we live in a house. It’s more like a series of holding pens.”

“But it works.”

“Yes, but we can’t even let the little ones in the yard if Sesi is out there. She’s just too boisterous. What’s it going to be like with a little pig running around?”

“It would be fun,” stressed Emma, as if I might not be familiar with the word.

Sometimes you just know when the deal is done. Every reservation I could muster was met by a pre-planned response. The proposed pet was highly sociable, good with hens and other animals, but would deter Mister Fox. The daily upkeep would be conducted by Emma and the children. They had learned their lesson with the rabbits, they assured me. This time, things would be different. I would not have to be involved in any way. Pigs were also intelligent, so I learned, even the small model. They clocked in as one of the smartest species on the planet after humans, chimps, and dolphins. According to the kids, piqued by my lack of enthusiasm, that made them sharper tools than me.

“Studies even show that all breeds of pig can dominate at videogames with joysticks,” Emma added, in a brazen aim for my weak spot. “Just think about it. At last you can have some company on the PlayStation.”

They had everything covered. Everything but the price tag. This detail Emma slipped in at the last moment, along with the fact that our name was on the list. Not just for one. For two.

“Out of the question!” I declared, grasping for a reason. “There’s only room for one pig in this household, and . . . erm, that’s me!”

In the silence that followed, as my family left me feeling like an old dog before it’s put to sleep, I swore I could hear the patter of tiny trotters preparing to run riot through my life.

Exactly what is a mini-pig? I’d never heard of such a thing. Could it be a giant con, I asked myself? Searching online was quite an eye-opener. Once I’d got beyond the blog entries about these pint-sized porkers, usually marked by, “OMFG!! I so want one!!,” I found a biomedical Web site that immediately cut through the cuteness. Mini-pigs were real, I learned, only they hadn’t been invented to make women and children go weak at the knees. In 1960s Germany a breeding program had been undertaken to create a pig for one purpose only. Part Vietnamese potbellied, known for its fertility, and part Minnesota, recognized as being one of the most laid-back varieties on earth, the resulting mini-pig came into existence to meet the demands of science.

“These pigs,” I told Emma. “They’re basically lab rats.”

I showed her the Web site. In silence, she clicked through the brief history I had read, only to be confronted by an image of a tiny pig with electrodes attached to its head. I couldn’t say for what purpose because Emma shut down the browser in a blink.

“All the more reason we should give two a home,” she said. “I’ve done my own research too, you know. This breeder has been in the business for years. She raises her own special brand of mini-pigs, but not so they can have shampoo squirted into their eyes. They’re pets, pure and simple, and I’m not changing my mind on this. Pinky and Perky are going to be part of our family.”

I watched her lips shape the two names. I didn’t need her to repeat what I thought I had heard.

“Oh, please. Is that the best you can do?”

“The little ones suggested it,” replied Emma. “Are you going to overrule them?”

“In the interest of good taste, I have no choice.”

“From the man who named the chickens Maggie, Marge, and . . . remind me of the last one?”

“That had an original theme,” I countered. “A tribute to The Simpsons and Futurama.”

“But do you think Bender was the most appropriate name you could’ve chosen? The kids went into school and told their teachers, you know.”

“Bender was a lovely chicken,” I said. “So was Marge.” I paused there and glanced out of the window. Ever since the fox attack, the sight of our one surviving chicken at the back of the yard never failed to make me feel bad. I couldn’t genuinely hold Maggie responsible for the impending arrival of two mini-pigs. I just wasn’t sure I could live with the crushingly clichéd names my wife was threatening for them. “How about we keep the theme going?” I suggest. “Bart is cool. So is Mister Burns. Or, how about Leela?”

“How about learning to live with Pinky and Perky?”

Emma folded her arms. In my mind, I foresaw a day when one escaped, probably the latter, and I would have to roam the village calling its name out loud.

Unlike a parrot or a hamster, you can’t just pop into the pet store and pick up a mini-pig. Nor is there anywhere like the number of breeders as there is for cats or dogs. As a result, you register interest, cry at the last of the savings you’re asked to plunder, and then wait for a litter to arrive. It doesn’t stop there, however. With a pig of any size comes paperwork. Not that I knew this beforehand. In fact, it only became apparent when I opened the mail one morning over breakfast.

“What’s this?” I showed Emma the form that had been sent to me. “It’s from the Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. That’s DEFRA, isn’t it? The mad-cow people.”

Emma took the form, scanned it for a moment, and then appeared to remind herself of something.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, and handed it back to me. “You need to register as a farmer.”

“That’s a good one,” I chuckled, and stopped when she showed no sign of joking. “Really?”

“I called them the other day. By law, you have to notify DEFRA if you’re going to keep swine. They told me you needed a registration number. It’s very straightforward.”

“Emma, I’m not a farmer. I write children’s books. If I wanted to get excited by tractors or shout at ramblers, I’d have pursued a different career.” I stopped there to drink my tea as indignantly as possible.

“Anyway, why do I need to be the farmer? They’re going to be your mini-pigs. You be the farmer.”

“I would,” she said, “but you’re at home every day. It just makes sense, in case they need to get in contact or anything.”

I studied the form. “So what else does this qualify me to do? Blockade the lane with sheep carcasses and set light to them?”

“That was the French farmers,” Emma pointed out, before collecting a pen from beside the phone. “And this just needs your signature.”

We didn’t have to wait long before news came that Emma’s mini-piglets had been born. In fact, the breeder emailed us regular photographic updates on the progress of the litter. When she sent us the first image, I took one look and wondered whether we had basically been sold shaved vermin.

“I’m not a complete fool,” I declared. “You should ask for your deposit back.”

The shot in question showed a whole bunch of new arrivals feeding from a saucer of milk. Without meaning to sound distasteful, they were each the length of a sausage.

“They are mini-piglets and make no mistake.” By her tone, I could tell that Emma did not want to believe anything else. At that moment, I really felt as if nothing would persuade her to rethink this upgrade to her pet plan. Maybe she could see the despair in my eyes, because her expression softened considerably.

“If it helps,” she offered, “I’m prepared to rethink calling them Pinky and Perky. Actually, I’ve been wondering about the names you repeatedly suggested before each child was born.”

“The two you always overruled?” I brightened at this. Having done nothing but object to the whole mini-pig venture, this was the first instance where I felt a bit more positive. “Butch,” I said, as if road testing how it sounded. I nodded to myself, smiling as I tried the two names together. “Butch and Roxi.”

Over the next few weeks whenever new images arrived I would study them carefully and question their authenticity.

“Butch certainly looks small,” I said one time, “but how do you know that bucket hasn’t been placed in the foreground? Surely that’s a normalsize piglet with a bucket positioned so it looks tiny.”

“Why would the breeder do that? Her Web site has loads of testimonials on it.”

“And another thing,” I persisted. “If Butch and Roxi are from the same litter, how come they look so totally different?”

“They don’t.”

“Butch is black with white trotters, so he’s basically part cat,” I pointed out. “And Roxi is the color of a proper pig.”

I scrolled to a shot just to illustrate my point. The female had a few dark splodges on her, but otherwise her pinkness marked her out from her brother.

“And you became a mini-pig expert when?” asked Emma.

“Since I became a farmer,” I said. “I think I have a responsibility to know where my flock have come from. If that’s what you call a bunch of pigs.”

“It’s a herd,” she told me. “And the fact that they have different markings just shows their heritage. Mini-pigs are a combination of lots of different breeds nowadays. It means all kinds of aspects of the bloodline can come through in the same litter. Whatever it takes to create the perfect little snorter, that’s fine by me.”

I accepted this without question. Why? Because I had saved the best evidence until last.

“If you’ll just look at this shot with the breeder in it,” I said, moving on to the next image. “You can’t deny that the mini-pigs suddenly look much bigger. It just doesn’t add up.”

Emma studied the picture. It featured a female figure in Wellington boots sitting cross-legged on the floor of a barn. Although cropped at the neck, she was playing with piglets that most certainly could not fit inside teacups.

“They are quite big,” Emma agreed.

“Quite big? She’s not short of a bacon sandwich there!”

I watched Emma take another look. At that moment, I felt a surge of righteous vindication. Then she tapped at the image on the screen and turned to me triumphantly.

“That’s because it isn’t the breeder. It’s her daughter. She’s five!”

With my eyebrows climbing, I faced the evidence once more.

“Is she tall for her age?” I asked, pretty much knowing there’d be no response.