36 | March• 2018
precious, even as she approached her
full-grown weight of 300 kg.
Now, I admit there’s nothing all
that peaceful about being startled
awake at 3am by a 300-kg pig bar-
relling down a hallway towards your
bedroom. It’s something you feel first:
a vibration that rumbles through the
mattress into your consciousness. You
have only moments to realise what’s
happening as you hear the sound of
hooves racing across the hardwood,
getting louder by the second.
Within moments, our darling pig,
Esther, comes crashing into the room,
most likely spooked by a noise. She
launches onto our bed much the
same way she launched into our lives.
And while it might be a mad scram-
ble to make space for her – there are
usually two humans, two dogs andOn our next vet visit, a few months
after we’d adopted Esther, I had to ad-
mit that she’d been growing quickly.
Over that short time, she’d started
closing in on 36 kg. It was becom-
ing clear that I’d probably adopted a
commercial pig – and she was going
to be enormous.
I HADN’T KNOWNI’dwantedapig,
but the joy I felt once I knew I would
always be going home to her made me
smile. Everything about Esther was
precious: the way she shuffled around,
the way her little hooves slid along
the floor when she ran, the funny lit-
tle clicking noise she made when she
pranced. She’d also nuzzle our hands
to soothe herself, licking our palms
and rubbing her snout up and down
on us as she fell asleep. And she stayed
Steve (left), Derek and their menagerie try to pose for a family photo