Pig in a Bucket

How many of you have ever had a farm animal living in the house?

Here's a story written by a farm wife in Illinois. One of her latest blog posts is titled "The Bawling in the Basement".  It is a great little read and reminded me of a story from my childhood.

Pig in a Bucket

There was a pig in a bucket. Not its snout nuzzling in for corn or water as most pigs are prone to do when a bucket is carried into the lot, but the whole pig. A very little pig. A very little pink pig. A very little pink pig in a bucket.  A very little pink pig in a bucket in the closet. A very little pink pig in a bucket in the closet in the kitchen. Weird...

This little pink pig in a bucket was the runt of the litter. Dad had determined it would not suffer the terminal fate of most runts. So, there was a pig in a bucket in our kitchen. Mom was tasked with keeping this pig alive. It was in the closet in the kitchen because it was very warm in the closet. That's what little pigs need. Sometimes this comes from the sow, but that can be a dangerous affair. Sows tend to lay down on the piglets that don't move fast enough and they don't get back up.

The furnace was in our kitchen closet. It was a very warm place and I suppose if you were a piglet curled up atop a pile of fuzzy rags in a bucket this wouldn't be such a bad spot to start life. This would especially be the case if you happened to know what the phrase "sucking hind tit" means. That's the teat reserved for the runt, and very unlikely to have enough milk for survival.

Mom fed this little pig in a bucket from a baby bottle. I don't recall if it lived, but the effort was valiant.