Arnold Meets Tillie: Pig Tales Part 5

For Christmas one year, I wrote my kids a little book called Pig Tales, which chronicled all of their adventures with their pet pigs: Arnold and Tillie. I realized the stories were too much fun not to share, so I thought I would share them here in a blog series. If you would like to follow along, please subscribe!

As winter approached, the whole family began to ponder: how would we keep Arnold warm during the frigid, snowy New England winters? His little doghouse wasn’t insulated. Also, Arnold loved to be around people so much, would he be lonely when we couldn’t come and visit as much? Finally, the solution came to us: Arnold needed a companion pig.

On the day of my birthday tea party, the rest of the family drove down to Long Island to the kune-kune farm to find a friend for Arnold. They met Sadie, a big sow who ate cheerios by the scoopful and dozens of kune-kunes of all shapes and colors. We knew we wanted a girl pig and thought she should be smaller than Arnold. Eventually they decided on Matilda (or Tillie). She was dark ginger with black spots and the smallest pig there.

It was dark when they got home with Tillie. She was so dizzy from the car ride that she tipped over when we put her in the hillside pen. She also had a runny nose and husky little oink. Her snout looked a little squished on one side, and one eye seemed squinty. We weren’t sure her eyesight was very good, since she always seemed to miss when we tried to feed her by hand. Her little tail didn’t curl like Arnold’s did when he was happy. Ella said that she was the Mary Lennox of pigs: sickly and grumpy. Had we adopted a special needs piglet?

Tillie turned out to be the perfect friend for Arnold. After one night of sleeping in separate quarters, Arnold and Tillie moved into the hay house we had built for them together. When Arnold ran to the fence in the morning and jumped up on the fence to say hello and be fed, Tillie would run there too. She was too small to put her trotters up on the wooden plank, so she would run back and forth under Arnold’s legs. If Arnold was grazing, she was right there by his side. If Tilly got a scratch and flopped, then Arnold (who had lately seemed too mature to flop for a scratch) flopped too. Everywhere Arnold went, Tillie was by his side. 

 

*Pig Tales Part 5*