That Dammit Pig!

A love story

Photo by Christopher Carson on Unsplash

Author’s note: Spring is here, and I’m feeling nostalgic for farm life. Also, I’m starting to get organized to write that memoir about my amazing dad, and this would be one of his favorite vignettes. I hope you enjoy it too. Every word is true. 🫶🏻

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When I was a little girl, my family lived on a 1250-acre heavily forested ranch in northern Virginia, where a residential gated golf community called Aquia Estates now exists. Formerly an antebellum plantation, it was a delightful place for a curious child to grow up, with a variety of animals, wild and domestic, and some not sure which they were! We kept horses and dairy cows, free-range chickens, and a coop often full of pheasant and quail chicks that my dad raised for hunting. There were birds, deer, rabbits, raccoons, and ‘possums, and, of course, plenty of fish for feeding the hordes of wild kittens born from domestic cats that had been abandoned on our property by irresponsible pet owners.

I was worried, even at a tender young age, not only about the welfare of these lost little kitties but especially about my bird friends who were at risk of being eaten by them. So it became my personal responsibility to feed the cats on the farm. My father never liked cats much, for this same reason, but at least we never seemed to have a rodent problem!

My parents never knew about this, but I had found a leaky little boat abandoned in the old boathouse (surely antebellum), and a broken little paddle — the perfect size for a five-year-old girl! Bait worms were plentiful and easily dug up from the wet mud by the creek, and an old bamboo fishin’ pole with a rusty hook was all I needed to catch plenty of catfish to feed my adopted feline friends.

I would paddle out into the creek and spend an idyllic afternoon watching clouds, counting the deer on the nearby island, pondering the problems of my known universe, and occasionally actually catching something. Having watched my early-morning bait-worm dig along the bank, the cats knew when dinner was about to be served. As my rickety little craft approached the bank, dozens of cats of all types and sizes appeared from their hiding places in the forest — tiny ones, large ones, fierce ones, sweet ones––many with bobtails indicating their mixed ancestry. “Chow time, Kitties!”

And soon I would hear a distant voice calling me. Time for my own dinner, through the forest, down the road, and just up the hill at our little house at Woodstock Ranch.

County Fair

One fine hot summer day approaching my sixth birthday, my parents took me to the county fair in Manassas, Virginia, about an hour’s drive from Woodstock Ranch. That was the most fun a little kid could ever hope to have all in one day. There were farm animals of every kind, proudly displayed by their 4-H Club owners, plus rides and games, and a hot mess of other little kids running around laughing, playing, getting all dirty and sweaty. But this was a day when mud, dirt, and friendly animal smells were very good things.

At the clanging of a loud bell, my father grabbed my hand and rushed me over to a small corral that had been flooded overnight, making a gigantic mud rink, perfect in its gooshiness. In this muck were about a dozen tiny pink piglets, all greased down with lard, racing around, squealing, rolling, and making no end of a huge mess. It was the County Fair’s Annual Greased Piglet-Catching Contest, only for kids five and younger. And the prize, if you could actually catch and hold onto one, was your very own little piggy to take home — not to mention a serious pile of filthy clothes.

Well, no one ever catches a muddy, greasy, wriggly little piglet. Never. I mean, think about it. How many people do you know who have ever done this, or who knows anyone who ever has? If a piglet doesn’t want to be caught, it will not be taken — until that fateful summer day.

With Porky and me, it was mud at first sight. She leapt into my arms, her soft, muddy nose nuzzling my chin, and that was it. She was mine and I was hers. I remember my father’s slightly rueful grin as I delivered my prize. We all knew our world had abruptly changed forever.

Anyone who ever saw the movie “Babe” knows how irresistibly cute a young pig can be. Personally, I’m certain the producers of that movie had heard about my little Porky, because Babe’s personality clearly was modeled after Porky’s, with one important exception. Porky had a pretty big ego, and a temper to match.

As a species, pigs are highly intelligent, affectionate, and emotional. Porky, however, was at the top of her class in all respects. And she suffered a bit of species-confusion, shall we say, having only a young collie pup to hang out with, and a five-year-old girl to relate to, one of which she tolerated, and the other she loved more than anything, including food.

Porky was a little princess. Spoiled rotten. Dainty and prissy to the point of not wanting to put her little pink feet down in wet grass. I remember my father laughing uncontrollably when watching her walk in the morning dew: step, shake foot, step, shake foot, step, shake foot… and so on.

She became the world’s first house-pig, learning indoor manners in one lesson and never making a mistake on the carpet. Whenever Tippy, our collie, came inside, Porky was right there with him.

Porky grew up so fast…

Campbell’s Tomato Soup and cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off were standard lunch fare for us kids on the farm. We ate in the kitchen at an enameled-top metal table, white with red trim, sitting on chrome-plated metal chairs with red leather cushions. From my chair I could see out the front screen door onto the porch, where Porky and Tippy would lie together on hot summer afternoons, cooling their tummies on the concrete floor.

But this day was different. I could see Porky was upset about something. She was pacing back and forth, uttering cranky little grunts, and I got the idea that she wanted to come inside where her people were. But Mom was not going to invite her inside this day.

Porky was clearly unhappy about this. Her grumpiness became anger and her anger became rage, as she squealed, complained, and stomped around on the porch. “Go away, Porky,” Mom yelled. Well, that did it. Porky understood the rejection, and she did not like it. In a huff, she turned and trotted off, and the incident was over.

Or was it? As I took the last bite of my sandwich, there she was again at the screen door, her snout completely loaded with the greasiest mud she could find. Remember those mud puddles in the dirt road where the tadpoles hatched? When they begin to dry up, the mud becomes too slimy and disgusting even for kids to enjoy. This is what covered Porky’s face, and this is what she delicately and gently wiped, in an artistic zigzag pattern, all over the screen door. When satisfied with her decorating, she walked away with a little snort and a smile, and I could hear her smugly thinking that revenge is sweet indeed.

The last time I heard my father’s famous belly-laugh, one that brought happy tears and convulsions to us both, was when he recounted the tale of “that dammit pig” and the hunters. But first, a bit of background about my dad at the time…

During our Woodstock Ranch period, Dad was a captain in the Air Force, stationed at the Pentagon, about an hour’s drive up Route 1, past Quantico. On weekends, he farmed, grew hay for the animals, and raised game birds — pheasants and quail — for hunting. The ranch — never called a “farm”! Dad was of sheep-ranching stock from way out west — supported a rich variety of other game as well, including deer, rabbits, wild turkeys, and flocks of ducks that lived around Aquia Creek, an important river that ran alongside our property.

At the time, we lived in the “Little House,” a tiny two-bedroom cottage next to the main plantation manor — the “Big House” — where visitors stayed. On certain special fall weekends, Dad would invite his Pentagon buddies for a hunting weekend, staying in the Big House by night, and hunting in the woods by day. On Friday afternoons before the hunting party arrived, we released our young pheasants and quail into the wild and wished them good luck.

To help with the hunt, Dad kept a kennel of well-trained dogs — Chesapeake Bay retrievers, Irish setters, English pointers, and some kind of baying hound-mutt who often led the pack. Some of these dogs were trained to flush pheasant and quail from the underbrush, and some were trained to leap into the river and collect fallen mallards. Each one fully understood what their jobs were, and each loudly proclaimed their eagerness to please their masters.

Little Porky was a charming intruder on these hunts, rapidly mastering this new game of hunt and seek, joining the pack with her joyous grunts and squeals. Unfortunately for the dogs, Porky’s IQ was orders of magnitude above the capacity of a mere canine, and it wasn’t long before she became the pack leader.

So, off charges this random, unlikely assortment of military men in camouflage, bumbling through the forest with rifles, ammo, duck calls, and thermoses, surrounded by a cacophony of barks, bays, and yelps… and led by grunts and squeaks. Even at her tender age, Porky was a quick study, taking over much of the flushing and retrieving, but primly standing aside while her canine minions leapt into icy river waters to fetch unfortunate mallards.

Dad’s last big belly laugh erupted one afternoon many decades later as he recalled the perplexed expressions on the hunters’ faces. Part of Dad’s game had been to pretend that all this was normal! Normal to see a young piglet observe an English Pointer with its tail straight out, one paw up, rigid posture aimed at a quail in the brush. Normal to see a piglet, with its rounded spine and curly tail, “point” at the same bird, one hoof up, and struggling mightily to stretch its tiny pink tail out straight. But at that “point,” Dad completely lost it, instantly followed by the hunters, all laughing so hard and long that the hunt was effectively ended, and the men, wiping tears of laughter from wet faces, headed back to base camp for a couple of whiskeys and more laughter.

After the Hunt

Screened porch at the Little House after the hunt, photo by De Ward Ritchie, Sr.

Perched high in the crotch
of the ancient weeping willow tree,
she waited for the hunters to return,
drooling in anticipation
of her father’s spicy recipes
for pheasant and venison.

Hot and humid that autumn day,
she could feel
a rivulet of sweat
rolling slowly down her spine,
tickling tiny hairs in its path.

She heard in the distance
the bay of hunting dogs
not yet spent from the chase,
all secretly annoyed that her pet pig Porky
had led the pack this day.

Her stomach growled as she
scrambled down the trunk,
landing hard on the ground,
making her ankles ache.

Always ahead of the pack,
Porky trotted toward her
on piggy tippy-toes,
demanding a porcine hug —
reward for a successful hunt.

Later that evening, the screened porch
on the shady side of the house
was filled with the scents
of blood and guts and plucked feathers,
with dead birds festooning the ceiling.

Briefly she wondered
why she was forbidden
to open that mysterious door
at the back of the porch
that led to the spidery basement
where the wine was kept.

No matter. Dinner was served!

— Adelia Ritchie

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