Inspiration to write has been sorely lacking for me lately, but a few days ago, it arrived in the form of a pig. A teenage lawn pig, to be more precise.
It was Sage who first reported her presence; he’d watched her watch HIM play video games through the sliding glass door to our basement. Intrigued by his account, I went in search of the Mystery Pig, and it didn’t take long to find her. She was happily munching on cornstalks in my garden, which would have been annoying a couple of months ago, but now that the ground is frozen, she was welcome to her feast.
Our neighbor Jacob is a nice man but a horrible fence maintainer, and livestock in our yard is not infrequent. We’ve had horses, cows, and once a very ambitious chicken, but this was our first pig. “Don’t get attached,” my husband Paul warned. “She’s not ours, and she’s going to be bacon sooner or later.”
But it was too late; I’d already named her Wilbina. (I couldn’t name her Wilbur because she was most definitely a sow.) I assume she was a teenage pig because she was about the size a a St. Bernard–very modest dimensions compared to the pony-sized leviathans that graze in my neighbor’s fields. And that was for the best; the full size pigs can be terrifying. (Once, when Paul and I went to Jacob’s to get some sawdust for our chicken bedding, he directed us to get it from his pig barn. Dozens of beady eyes glowered at us as the sows made ominous rumbling noises. They seemed to know what humans were planning to do to them, and they seemed to want revenge. I couldn’t explain to them that I don’t eat pork, so I’d rather not meet a full-sized sow in my yard.)
I came home from work the next day eager to see Wilbina again–a shy, skittish creature that evoked no terror whatsoever–but alas, she disappeared. I don’t know if Jacob finally caught her or she wandered off to have porcine adventures elsewhere, but there was no sign of her.
I enjoyed my teenage lawn pig while she lasted, though.
Moments of Unexpected Beauty 
❤️