Petunia—The Playful Porker
AFTER years of moving from one city to another nearly every week, we came to expect unusual people and places. We were never so surprised, however, as when we pulled our trailer into the front yard of a home in Alpine, Texas. Rather than the usual small children or friendly dogs greeting us, out came a small, bouncing four-legged animal. Could it be . . . yes, it really was a little pig! But not an ordinary pink one. This one had gray, bristly hair and an arched back. It was a two-week-old piglet that when grown becomes the wild ferocious razorback that sends people fleeing in fright.
Davis Turmin, our host for the week, works for the United States Wild Life Service. In the rugged Big Bend country of Texas, he found a wild sow and two little ones. He captured one of the piglets and brought her home for a pet. And what name but Petunia would fit a wild baby porker?
We fell in love with Petunia. She visited our trailer each day looking for her favorite food, sliced apples. If we tried to pick her up she would twist and squirm, but finally she allowed us to lift her. Slowly we would take her in our arms and hold her like a baby. When we scratched her belly she would lie back with all four legs outstretched, softly grunting little “oinks.” Petunia loved attention, and she would rub her back or her blunt nose on our legs to get it.
Still she retained much of her wild disposition. One morning, failing to take the slow, patient procedure of picking her up, I grabbed for her. She bit my arm, bringing blood—a firm reminder that she might be tame, but still kept her natural wild disposition.
In the neighborhood where Petunia freely roamed—wild animals cannot legally be penned without a government permit—there was a pack of large dogs. Could this tiny pig survive among such powerful predators? No problem at all. She routed them easily, in spite of the fact that Turmin had earlier removed her incisor teeth so that she wouldn’t kill the dogs. In the wild, pigs like Petunia run in packs and kill mountain lions and other wildlife, but ordinarily they eat cacti, acorns and the plants of semiarid regions.
Petunia soon became too big for a pet, running in and out of the house. Visitors were frightened by the charging wild sow, now some 200 pounds (90 kg), that wanted only to be petted. She was eventually moved to a new home with friends in the country, much more like her natural habitat.
But, aren’t pigs dirty, gluttonous and simple-minded, the last animal that people would choose for a pet? That might be their reputation, but the opposite is true. A pig selects for its bathroom a corner of its pen farthest from where it eats and sleeps. Pigs lie in the mud for a good reason: to keep cool, since they have no sweat glands. And they are easily housebroken too. Surprisingly, the pig can reach a level of training comparable to that of a dog. Were not millions amazed by Arnold, the highly trained pet pig on the TV show Green Acres? And while there’s nothing delicate about a pig’s eating, it is still one of the few animals that will not overeat to the point of getting sick, as do cows, horses, dogs and some other animals.
We are learning that many animals formerly thought good only for eating, whether domestic or wild, can make fine pets. When shown consideration and kindness, the natural instinct to be submissive to man surfaces. How satisfying it is to enjoy many of these animals today! What a blessing it will be to find daily delight in all animals in the near future when God’s earth will become a paradise!
In the meantime, some of our fondest memories will be of Petunia, the bouncing little “wild” pig with the affectionate disposition.—Contributed.