To start with,
I had to drive past a roadside fruit and vege stall to get home from work, and Mother Theresa and her litter mates were born in the paddock next door to it, so I saw the old mother pig (sow) getting bigger and bigger as she got close to fallowing (giving birth).
She had 14 piglets for a start, and the sow on the right
has 16 piglets all as cute as cute as this little guy to the left below.
The breed of pig is a Kuni Kuni, a native pig to New Zealand.
The come in ever colour combination you can think of, from Tan, to ginger, to various shades of brown, black and white, and generally a combination of at least 2 colours.
They are a short pig lengthwise in compassion to commercial pigs, and tend to carry a lot of fat, over the back and down their sides, especially when they are kept as pets, so they don't have to forage for their food.
they have a shorter snout than commercial pigs, and when fully grown, have squashed in faces.
Back to the story, I watched the piglets growing day by day, and yearned to have one as a house pet. They were just so darn cute.
As the weeks went on, the odd one died, and the piglets themselves weren't thriving and were developing a pot gut, a sure sign they had intestinal worms. They started looking very unhealthy, and very lean.... more died.
One day I couldn't stand it anymore, there were six little guys let, so I went into ask if the were going to sell any, they were, but they were waiting for then to get bigger.... I knew they were old enough to be weaned, so asked if I could take one today, telling them I would bottle feed her. And explaining to them they if the old mother had less piglets she would have more milk for the others and the would grow much faster... that wasn't strictly true, what they needed was a good worming, but I had already told them that, and they didn't want to spend the money on worming them....
So they agreed that I could take one, so my young teenage son and his mate, went into the paddock and caught one, after a lot of chasing, laughing and squealing.
So we had our baby, the first thing I did was go back into town, and get some kitten and puppy worming tablets, and give it to her right there in the car, outside "The Warehouse" where we brought the pills.... I won't go into the size and number of worms that poor thing passed over the next few days, but I was amazed she could have that much inside her the poor thing, but once they were gone, her appetite double instantly, and hell she grew amazingly fast. I was working during the day, so took her to my dad's place, and he used to care for her in his pensioner flat. during the week, and I would take her back on the weekend.
I took her back to the place, a few weeks later, that still weren't selling her litter mates, I showed them what a difference the cheap worming tablets had on her, but they still wouldn't entertain the idea....
Dad named Mother Theresa, and he absolutely loved her, it was him that house-trained her, and taught her various tricks, which was pretty amazing for an old farmer, used of having pigs for one reason, and one reason only, to fatten up and kill for pork....
He also taught her to lead like a dog, and I believe took her down to the pub a couple of times, to sit at the bar while he was having a beer or 3 each day. He was also teaching her to respond to whistle commands, like a dog.
He used to talk to her allot, and told her the only way for her to stay out of the pot, was for her to grow big and strong, because she had enough teats, so she could become a breeding sow. Dad would buy, chook up and feed her the very best food, better than he feed himself.... that much be where I got that from, with me and my chooks... She was a much-loved pet.
One or more of the old folks at the pensioner flat where Dad lived, complained about him having a pig as a pet. Dad was an old rebel, a scoundrel and would often do things to upset the old busybodies that lived in the flats, so when the council got the complaint, they acted pretty quickly.
The housing inspector came out, expecting that dad had a full grown pig there.... but Mother Theresa was just a bit bigger than this sweetheart to the right, anyway, the inspector laughed when he saw her, glad she wasn't a big old bore, (male pig) like the one below. with the tusks.
Anyway, he said Mother Theresa had to go, so she came back to live with me and the two kids again.
I had had another fall, and re-injured my back, by that time, so was laying on a bed in the lounge most of the time, and Mother Theresa soon worked out how to get up on the bed, to lay with me to watch the afternoon talk shows. She has very similar taste in TV shows to me, so she just Oprah Winfrey, would never miss it, couldn't stand Ricki Lake, and quite liked Sally Jesse Raphael, but it didn't bother her if she missed it.
She seemed to know when Oprah was about to start, and generally would be up on the bed beside me, either sitting up, or laying between my legs down by my feet.One time she went outside to her toilet area, and the wind slammed the door shut, locking her out. Just before Oprah started, she started making noises at the door... I couldn't get up to let her in, and by the time the music started, she was beside herself, and she started squealing, what a hell of a noise that was. Every time you would think, well she can't get any louder than that, she would turn it up another octave. A couple of neighbours started yelling at her to shut up, and she took no notice. After about 10 minutes, my closest neighbour to the door Mother Theresa was standing at, walked over, yelling at her to shit up, and just wait they would let her in... still she didn't listen, and by the time the neighbour got to the door, she was most worried that maybe I had died, since Mother Theresa was so upset.
But once the door was opened she stopped squealing, she scuttled inside, up on the two steps, onto my bed, and settled down to watch the show.... the neighbour seeing I was alive, but in bad pain, helped me to the toilet, made a drink for me, and got my pills, plumped my pillows, and got me all settled for another few hours.
Mother Theresa was a clever little pig, the kids taught her to find and bring the remote to me. so I could change channels.... picking it up in her mouth, 99% of the time, one of her teeth would catch on a button and change the channel, We used to pretend she actually knew how to changed channels, which of course provided a lot of amusement and stories especially the times she happened to change it to the right channel. We only had 3 TV channels in those days, and I had turned the stations into each line of the remote, since she always picked it up in the middle, she had a 33% change of getting the right channel.
She used to lay on a blanket on the floor beside my bed at night to sleep, oh could she snore, a real house rattle some nights.
One night, after we were all asleep, she went from a sound sleep to jumping you, grunting an urgent but quite grunt, and running on the board floor, her wee legs going in all directions, as she slipped slid her way at top speed to the kitchen lounge area. When she was almost to the door, she left out an unholy squeal and kept squealing and the grunting, that sort of sounds like a dog back, sort of but not really.
I hear a voice yell, "What the Fuck, leave it and get the hell out of here" and then another person started to scream in pain and fear.
I then heard a person running, another person running with a bad leg, and Mother Theresa running on the wood floor, then down the steps at the front, and off into the night.
Mother Theresa's squealing was fading out as she got future from the house.
I got up, to see what was going on, yet know we must have had guys break in. I was too scared to turn the light on, but I could smell that coppery smell of blood in the house.
A few minutes later she was snuffling at the door, I let her in, and she and I sat together, calming each other down. A couple of neighbours arrived,
All was quite outside, while that was happening, so one of the neighbours, turned the lights on, There was a spray of blood along the floor, outside and down the steps. Mother Theresa was licking her lips and started to lick the blood up, I told her to stop doing that, but she seemed to want to clean up the mess she had helped make.
We could only guess, that she bit one of the intruders, and must have nicked an artery... She was my little Hero, and the story of her exploits got around the neighbourhood pretty fast, and suddenly she was the star of the show... and she loved every moment of the attention, and so she should. :)
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