Smokey Mountain Breakdown

For Friday Ark....at the Modulator

I came across her towards the back of a big livestock trailer. Piled in the back were crates with hound dogs and further back was a sweet faced and very large donkey.

"Are you selling your donkey?" I asked.

She turned to me, revealing a face like a young Madonna. Such lovely skin and such a sweet expression. She must have been around thirteen. She wore an over-sized flannel shirt much like those worn during the grunge craze, despite the heat of the day. Swaddled in a tea towel and gently held in her arms like an infant was a four week old baby pig.

She smiled at me and said, "Oh, these aren't mine, I'm just looking at the animals."

"Oh my goodness!" I say, petting softly the head of the tiny piglet, "What sort of pig is he?"

"He's a Vietnamese Potbellied pig." She says beaming like a young mother.

We actually have something of a VPP problem in the area. Many people don't realize how huge they actually get. Then the cuteness wears off and they "drop" them off on The Fifteenth. My friend, Gaynell, took in a pregnant one that had been set out on the side of the road. She ended up with about 10 of them. They are easy to find homes for when they are this guys size. Not so much when they top 250 pounds.

And the old-timers say they have too much fat on them to eat, so it is something of a problem. But I'm sure they eat them in Asia, don't they? Perhaps we just need to expand our culinary horizons. But they evidently don't make very good "Q".

But this little fellow was far from having anyone try to come up with recipes for him. At four weeks, he was already off of milk and eating whatever baby pigs eat. And it looked like he'd already found a friend for life.

I didn't ask her if he was for sale. I had the definite impression that he wasn't.