A Pig Denied

Newsletter 2024-07-12

It’s been a month since our dramatic battle with a pig in the jungle. We successfully rescued Onyx, despite his best efforts to stop us. He’s finally settled into his new, temporary digs. He’s developed a complex relationship with our two permanent pigs that, depending on the day, is somewhere between an uneasy truce and an alarming alliance. More on that later. Yesterday, I finally sent out the message I’ve been putting off for weeks. My wife only let me bring Onyx into our backyard under the explicit promise that he was a foster animal, not our new pet. I am a man of my word, even if I am sometimes also a man of loopholes. I reached out to my most promising lead for a longer-term pig foster home. A woman who worked at my kids’ former daycare has seven potbelly pigs at her place in the country. If she could handle my brood plus a swarm of her own oinkers, I figured she could handle Onyx as well. Would she even notice if he was in her yard? I doubt she does headcounts that often. I offered to bring Onyx to her property, where he could hang out until his current owner either rebuilds or gives up on ever reclaiming him. The daycare worker only needed a few minutes to consider my proposal. She said no.

I wasn’t sure how to tell Lola.