Pig Upstairs

Newsletter 2024-10-03

I don’t know if pigs will ever fly, but I can tell you the exact day they started going upstairs. For our rescue pig, Onyx, it was Wednesday. One second, he was peacefully napping on the couch. The next, he was on the second floor loudly smacking his lips after attempting to consume his body weight in guinea pig food. This is a whole new era where nothing in our house is safe. Welcome to my wife’s worst nightmare.

Our two permanent pigs used to go up the stairs all the time. They shared a bed with my now twelve-year-old, Mae, until they were close to full size. When they finally took up more space than she did, somebody had to be evicted. Mae was on her best behavior that week, so the pigs got the boot. We moved them to a toddler mattress on the ground, where they reluctantly slept for several months. Then, one fateful day, I trimmed Gilly’s hoof too far and hit the quick. It hurt when she walked down the stairs, so she simply refused to descend. She was stranded, and I had to carry her down like a very angry, bristly baby. Neither of us was happy about the arrangement. She never went upstairs again. Luna shared her newfound phobia out of solidarity. Suddenly, we had a pig-free sanctuary where delicious items like chapstick and garbage didn’t have to be stored high above the ground. It was a golden age with minimal swine emergencies. Then we rescued a pig.

Onyx has always thought a little bit differently than our other pets. There’s a lot going on behind those surprisingly deep brown eyes. He was the first of the pigs here to recognize his own reflection. We have a huge, eight-foot-tall dancing mirror built into the wall of our front room. It’s called a dancing mirror because that’s literally what it was for. It was a big deal to fox trot in front of it at parties. That’s how people got their daily dose of narcissism before selfies. Our other two pigs walked by it every day of their lives without noticing. It didn’t help that they don’t really have necks, so they could only see the very bottom of it. That didn’t stop Onyx. The first time he got in front of the mirror, he put his knees up on the ledge below it and stared directly into his own face. That was our first clue that our measures to prepare the house for the other pigs might not be sufficient for him. It was also our first hint that he might have a soul.

Since then, Onyx has continued to show a natural curiosity. Shockingly, that hunger for knowledge isn’t driven solely by his literal hunger. He’s particularly fascinated by windows. He regularly climbs onto the couch to stare out the opening behind it. At first, I thought he merely wanted to tear down the curtains. That would have been curtains for him in more ways than one. Lola will evict any and all threats to the drapery. Instead, Onyx gently moved the curtains aside so he could look out. He repeated the same gesture on a different couch in the front room looking out another window. It was a new way for him to experience glass. Rather than looking at himself, he was gazing beyond. His choice of windows was revealing. He didn’t bother with the one in the pig room, which overlooks the backyard where he spends most of his time. He preferred the front windows. Onyx wants to see a place he has yet to go. He’s the Christopher Columbus of pigs, yearning for exploration and discovery. If that discovery happens to include new food, all the better.

There was only one place that Onyx’s insatiable curiosity could lead: up. Over the past few days, I chased him off the bottom few stairs multiple times. I thought he got the message. He did. It was received and ignored. Wednesday, I was home alone, and the pigs were with me in the main part of the house. They’re not bad company when I work from home during the day. They mostly just sniff around before flopping on the ground or a couch. This time, Onyx was out cold in the living room. He looked so peaceful. I figured he would be fine without supervision for a few minutes. I went up to my third floor attic bedroom. When I came down, I heard a pig smacking his lips. The sounds were uncomfortably close. I checked the second floor landing. There was Onyx, clear as day, on an entirely new story of the house. Worse, he was in front of Betsy and Mae’s room. Their door was wide open.