And This Little Piggy

By Linda Collins

“Sissy, grab the box . . . time to slop the hogs.” Grandma carried a pan of table scraps out to the hog yard and tossed them over the fence into their trough. The hogs shoved and shouldered, crashing into the fence so hard I thought it might fall down. I kept my distance.

Next to the hog yard was the chicken yard, and every morning since I was big enough to run and not fall down and skin my knees, I had tagged along on Grandma’s heels, with the cardboard box, through the gate into the chicken yard, watching for the chickens to come piling out of the henhouse for breakfast. Grandma tossed corn on the ground outside the henhouse door, and while the hens were busy pecking it up, Grandma and I went inside, snatched their eggs out of the nests, and put them in the box. Grandma had a nice little side business selling eggs to the townspeople.

On the way back to the house we’d swing by the springhouse and leave the eggs in the cool water flowing through the cement tub. Then Grandma did the sweeping and the dusting before we—well, actually Grandma did most of it—put lunch together. One day Grandma carried the eggs out of the henhouse and then strode straight past the springhouse into the house and set the box in the warm cozy corner of the kitchen between the stove and the big furnace vent in the wall. Grandma pulled my toddler-size chair close to the edge of the box and said, “Sissy, you sit right here, and watch them eggs.”

So I sat, eyes glued to the eggs, while Grandma stood over a steaming pot, yanking feathers out of a chicken. Lulled by the warmth in the corner, I rested my head on my arm and was having trouble keeping my eyes open when an egg in the corner of the box nearest the stove gave a little shake.  I sat up squealing, “Grandma!”

She stopped plucking and bent over the box, grinning with anticipation. As we watched, egg after egg trembled and then rocked, sharp beaks riddled the shells, and chick after chick battered its way into the world.

A couple of mornings later, after the breakfast dishes were back in the cupboard and the hogs were slopped, Grandma bent over, picked up the box, and said, “C’mon Sissy, let’s take them back to their mamas.”

She marched out the door with the box and headed for the henhouse. I had to run to keep up. When she got to the henhouse, Grandma tossed out a handful of corn, and then when the hens were all busy with the corn, she quickly scooped chick after chick from the box and let them run with their mamas. When we got back to the kitchen, the corner by the stove was very, very empty.

One morning a few weeks later when I came down for breakfast, Grandma was sitting on a low stool in the cozy corner bottle-feeding a tiny kitten. Beside her was a box with seven more mewing little fur balls nestled in a bed of old towels, their eyes still closed against the world.

The kittens’ box stayed in the kitchen until the morning Grandma came down to start breakfast and found one curled up sound asleep on the rug by the kitchen sink. Even before the lard had melted in the skillet, the box of kittens was outside on the other side of the screen door. On our way to slop the hogs and feed the chickens, Grandma set a little bowl of scraps beside their box.

They ate and grew and ate and grew, and Grandma started setting their dish of scraps farther and farther from the house. Pretty soon she was setting it down all the way across the yard where the hog yard gate met the barn. Then one day she walked right past the little knot of kittens waiting for their breakfast and tossed every last one of the scraps into the hog trough.

I must have looked as surprised and disappointed as the kittens, because Grandma said, “They’ll never be good mousers if we feed ‘em all the time, Sissy. They get hungry enough, they’ll learn to hunt.” 

One scooted through the rails heading for the scraps in the hog trough, and I started after it. Grandma grabbed my elbow and hauled me back. “Sissy, you stay out of the hog yard,” she warned, her eyes stern and steady on mine. “Them hogs would eat you alive.” 

As we watched, the kitten backed off, turned, and scooted back through the fence. Before long, the kittens didn’t wait for scraps any more.

Then one morning Grandpa set a huge wooden box in the corner by the stove. I pulled up my chair, plopped down on its wicker seat, leaned my elbows on the box, and peeked inside.

“Snork, Snork, Snork, Snork, Snork!” A little pig flailed in his bed of straw, all four hooves cutting the air. I honestly can’t tell you who scared who more. I backed off so fast my chair tipped over.

Grandpa snorted and thrust a baby bottle at me. I pushed it away, miffed that he thought I still took a bottle! “It’s not for you, Sissy.” He chuckled. “It’s for him! This poor little guy’s mama didn’t want to feed him, and he’s hungry. I thought you might help out and feed him. He’s going to live here in the kitchen for a while, and it’ll be your job, yours and Grandma’s, to take care of him until he’s big enough to go back and live in the hog yard with his brothers and sisters.”

Grandma took the bottle and waved it in front of Piggy’s nose, and then she showed me how to tickle his lips with the nipple until he opened his mouth and gulped until it was gone.

Piggy lived in the kitchen for weeks and weeks, a lot longer than the chicks and kittens. Then one morning when I came down for breakfast, I found him struggling to get his feet under him. By the time I got to the box with the bottle, he was standing smack in the middle, snout in the air, waiting.

That should have tipped me off, but it still came as a surprise when Grandma said, “Sissy, one of these days, probably tomorrow, Grandpa is going to take Piggy back to his mama. He’s off the bottle and eating scraps now. He needs to go be with the rest of his kind.”

Sure enough, the next morning, Piggy and his box were gone. All through breakfast I stared at the empty corner. Grandma had said that Piggy was going outside to live with his mama and his brothers and sisters, and by my way of thinking, that meant I would find him in the hog yard.

After breakfast I stretched on tiptoe, flipped the lever that opened the screen door, and took off past the springhouse across the yard to the gate into the hog yard. I was halfway there before I heard Grandma coming and glanced over my shoulder. “Sissy!” Grandma was about three steps behind me. She had stopped to rip a switch off the tree by the springhouse and was whipping it through the air.

I reached the gate and started to climb. The hogs were churning, bumping against the fence, snorking loud pig snorks. I had both feet on the third rail when I heard the switch and felt the air move against my legs. Grandma slashed the switch back and forth, yelling, “Git, git, git, git!”

I froze waiting for the sting of the switch on my legs. Grandma caught me around the waist, lifted me off the gate and hugged me close. Then she lugged me back to the screened porch and sat me down for a talk. “Sissy, Piggy belongs with his family now,” she said. “There’ll be other chickens and other kittens, maybe even another Piggy, and we’ll give them our help, too, but they all have to go back to their own kind when they’re able . . . and Baby, you can’t go with them.”

Grandma sighed and stood. I barely realized that she’d thrown the bolt on the screened door on her way inside as I sat there ruminating on the comings and goings in the warm cozy corner between the stove and the big furnace vent.

[Linda was born in the northern Indiana farm country toward the end of WWII. Her daddy was a chaplain in the army stationed in the Philippines, so for the first few years of her life she and her mother lived with her daddy’s parents on their farm, where this story originated. Later in life, Linda earned a B.A. from Indiana State University, taught for a year, then followed her dream of becoming an entertainer. Fifteen years later she began writing, first lyrics and poetry, and then advertising when she was hired for voice-over work at House of Public Notice Advertising Studio. She graduated from the Charter State College’s Long Ridge Writer’s Group Program with credits toward her MFA and began writing fiction and nonfiction, publishing shortly after graduation. From her first published story, The Silver Bells Ball, through And This Little Piggy…” she hasn’t stopped.]