Cyrrano The Pig

Cyrrano The Pig.
  At first glance a story aout a pig doesn't hold much appeal, but Cyrrano was a very special pig.  I was about nine years old in the summer of 1955, and lived on a farm in rural Nebraska under the generally liberal guidance of my mom and dad.  I was the tail ender, bu quite a martin, of four brothers who had already flown the nest so my folks, who had largely tired of the discipline thing, left me much to my own devices except at chore time where I was expected to pull my own weight.  We milked, by hand, five cows, Millie, Star, Polly, Mavis and Geranium who was my cow.  My dad had given her to me when she was a baby.  I raised her on a bottle, gave her much petting and affection and she grew up into a fine holstein who rewarded me with an occasional slobbery lick as well as frequent swats of her tail and she had a habit of standing on a few of my barefoot toes if I wasn't careful.
  That Spring my Uncle Hjaalmar, that's the mangled Scandanavian spelling of the name Elmer, thought I should have a pig also, so he gave me a baby pig about half the size of a cat.  I wasn't accustomed to pigs so my first thought was to pick up the little bundle but instead of being soft and cuddly he was hard as a stone and very uncooperative with much threshing around and squealing. As we didn't have a place to keep him at home, we just turned him loose and let him socialize with the chickens and the dog who all went pretty much wherever they pleased.  It wasn't long before he apparently identified with the dog as he got in the habit of laying under one of the lilac, bushes in front of the house on hot afternoons near to where the dog spent his prime loafing time.  Now all animals believe that to properly loaf under a bush it isn't enough just to lie there.  They have to dig a bit of a hole or depression first so their body has a more or less form fitting place to reside.  The dog, Spud, had it down pat and had his hole refined to  perfection and after a week or so I noticed the pig had his own special spot which he spent a considerable amount of time getting just right.  Life was good.  Time went by this summer of warm breezes and cool rains and Cyrrano shortly became as big as the dog, who weighed forty five pounds. His hole under the bush increased proportionately.  They had evidently become pals, even though the pig was a bit standoffish.  I frequently saw them around the farm place together and they rarely got into it unless there was some tasty morsel which they would bicker over with a lot of stiffness, growling and grunting but no harm really came.
  Now we lived at the end of the road so there wasn't much traffic but sometimes people did come to see us and hey always got an enthusiastic greeting by the dog as he loved to chase cars.  He would hear them coming and greet them a couple hundred yards from the house with much barking, tire biting and general mayhem, so in short, we were rarely surprised by guests. After a couple of months of watching this, Cyrrano apparently thought this was one of his duties, or maybe it was just fun, to join in on the car chasing.l  Now when someone would come by they would always be accompanied by a pig and a dog, barking, grunting, growling and biting at tiers right up to the front door.  It was only the truly courageous souls who had the nerve to get out of the car and face all this fervor without first being reassured by Mom or Dad that it was "okay, but watch the pig, he has an attitude".  Try as we may we never could break the dog or the pig of this nasty habit and as the summer went along Cyrrano tuned into quite a speedster.  By fall Cyrrano was getting to be a big boy, my Dad guessed him at about one hundred and fifty pounds,s and the pig knew it.  Also he had a hundred and fifty pound hole under the lilac bush and I think the bush was starting to lean.  When Spud and Cyrrano had a little flareup now it was still pretty much even as the pig was much bigger but Spud had sharp teeth and the pig had tender ears.
  Fall passed and winter came and everything slowed down.  Cyrrano spent the nights on the straw in the barn and Spud spent the nights in the house.  The pig hung around the front door of the house a lot during the days.  I think he wanted in the house too.  Mom was not happy.  With the warm spring day everything returned to the good weather mode.  The chickens ate anything green that poked out of the ground, the cows got off their diet of hay and returned to the pasture and Cyrrano, who now weighed about three hundred pounds, returned to his lilac bush. All the trees and bushes began to leaf out except, conspicuously, the pigs bush.  It had taken all the abuse it could stand and had expired over the winter.  The pig, realizing that this collection of twigs would never keep the harsh summer sun off his delicate skin, promptly started excavating a new hole under a different bush.  In two days he had dug a hole you could have hidden a small car in.l  It looked like a bunker from World War One.  Mom was not happy.  The pig had to go.
    All my whining was to no avail and they decided to take the pig to the sale barn and let someone else deal with him.  Dad didn't have a truck to haul him with and it would be too expensive to hire someone to haul a single pig to the sale so he decided to to the hauling himself in the panel truck.  To those of you who don;t know what a panel truck is, it is much like a very early suburban without some of the luxury items such as cruise control aid conditioning and glass in the drivers side door.l  Getting him into the panel turned out to be very tricky.  Lassoing him did not work as he had a very short fat neck and he was much too crafty to let that happen.  Chasing him down was useless because he was as fast ass greased lightning and even if we did catch him he outweighed dad by a hundred pounds and Dad wasn't fond of the idea of being bitten or trampled by an angry pig.  The only thing left was to resort to wit.  Yes, sneakiness.  After all we were smarter than the pig.
  Dad opened the back doors of the panel and built a small ramp so it would be easy to Cyrrano to get in as he surely would, as he got into everything else on the place.  All we had to do was watch and when he was lounging inside we would slam the doors and off we would go.  The dog promptly jumped in and would leave only after much fist shaking, arm waving and bad language.  It was a good plan but as the days went by it seemed like it was taking a long time for it to mature.  The pig checked it out thoroughly but would have nothing to do with our scheme and as this was Dad's work truck it was causing him a great inconvenience.  We had to be sneakier.  There was nothing that Cyrrano liked better than apples.  Dad theorized he could place a half dozen apples in the truck when he was sure the pig was looking.  He would be unable to resist the apples.  He would jump in the back.  We would slam the doors and off we would go.  Resolution.  We attracted Cyrrano by playing a little catch by the truck and as always, if there was anything going on, he would give it a thorough inspecting.  He showed up to see what gives.  Dad placed the apples in the panel and "Cyrrano gave them the eyeball."  Then he gave Dad the eyeball.  Then he gave the apples the eyeball.  It was crunch time.  Like a speeding freight train the pig was in the truck and w4e slammed the doors.  Ah the sweet smell of success.  We raced to the front, opened the doors to pile in, and lo and behold there was the pig in the front seat, tail twitching and nose hairs bristling with attitude.  He had eaten all six apples, and crawled over the front seat in ten seconds.  The jig was up.  Cyrrano knew something smelled in Denmark as well as in the truck.  Dad had kind of a dejected look on his face as he realized the ppig had come out on top.  He saidd, "looks like we'll have to try something else", and walked off.  The next morning the van was empty and Cyrrano was nowhere to be seen.  Two more days went by and not a sign.  The third day, our neighbor, who lives down by the river and who has a menagerie of normal as well as misfit animals, called and asked if we were missing a pig.  Mom said no.