Petunia Complicates Vacation Plans, 1981

Petunia was about to farrow and we went on vacation anyway. Our family didn’t take elaborate vacations, choosing instead to either camp in the little pickup camper or visit my grandmother in Chicagoland. This particular time, we were off to visit my Baba, and Geoffrey was a nervous wreck. Petunia, his FFA project sow, would be left behind, tended to by the Baarlie’s, our neighbors and veteran professional pig farmers. Petunia, they assured us, would be in good hands. Pig reproduction is pretty clockwork, so she should farrow after we returned. But if she did go early, the Baarlies would be right there to help her out, knowing all the signs so well as they did. So we left them with Baba’s phone number (no cell phones in those days, of course), and drove south through Wisconsin and into the Land of Lincoln.

I have no idea what Petunia thought of the abandonment by her caregivers. It’s quite possible that between the boredom and sadness of being left alone, she suffered a bit. Petunia was a long pig, known as a white pig, but really she was very pink. She was friendly and fun-loving. She liked to be out of her pen and hanging out in the yard with us, where she would snuff and dig and grunt happily nearby. But we were under strict rules not to keep her out in the sun too long as she could get sunburned as easily as we could. Petunia was kind to the kittens, bold with the dogs, and eager to see what might be coming out of the kitchen. She loved, loved, loved to be scratched behind the ears and under the chin, and did not have any sort of nasty smell about her. She was also a wonderful barometer, and would stir in her pen loudly to alert us all to get inside if bad weather was on its way. She also seemed to glow in the dark. When we would visit her pen after dark, she would leave her shed to greet us, luminous and swift. We all rather liked Petunia, a much more fun FFA project than the dull Holstein steer calves that chewed and stamped and swatted flies.

But leave her behind we did. Our vacation went well: probably this was one of those times when we did some hanging out at my grandmother’s large backyard, gobbling all her raspberries, and complaining that we bored. And maybe, to get us off her back, a trip to Great America (before it was part of the Six Flags franchise), to ride the coasters and lock our keys in the car.

Then Geoff called the Baarlies. Mike was in my class in school and Julie was in Geoff’s, and we were good friends, and I’m sure I’d like them still. Bad news: Petunia was missing from her pen. So as we returned north to our home and barn west of Bruce, we tried to imagine the best. We speculated that she was shy of the Baarlies, who probably smelled of strange pigs, and she was just hiding when they came over. Yes, that must be it. We tried not to imagine the worst, but those thoughts crept up. Maybe she hid in the woods to farrow, and died giving birth. Or the coyotes attacked her when she was down. The hawks had stolen her piglets. We were surrounded by miles of woods and fields, and our part of the county was sparsely populated. She could be anywhere.

So the night we arrive home to learn she still had not been found, we were all worried. This certainly cast a shadow over our vacation and the regrets began to mount. The Baarlies had already notified all the neighbors, and just to make sure, Geoff called them, too. On the party-line phone, really we only needed to make sure that Mrs. Dixon overheard the conversation, and then it would be all over the countryside that our pig was missing.

The next day, we got a call from the golf course down south by Amacoy Lake: they had our pig. She had been found excavating the 9th hole, rooting for grubs or worms or acorns. Geoff was so relieved. My dad was mortified: who knows how much the golf course repairs would cost? But the course owner took it in stride: so many golfers were amused by the friendly pig and the funny roundup to catch her, that they took it as an excuse to stay late, buying each other rounds in the clubhouse.

So Geoff and my dad fetched the silly girl home, traveling 5 miles in the back of the temperamental Ford Bronco. She was a bit scratched up from berry briars, and muddy from head to toe, but she was otherwise fine and still pregnant. So Petunia was installed back in her pen, with some fresh food and water. She farrowed the next day, producing a fine collection of the most adorable baby piglets, all as luminous and pink as she was.