Animal Activities #54

The pig was a misty morning baby, and the sun was not making its way through the fields. He was given the name Bristle by the farmer not because he was a rough animal but because his hairs, which were of a pale colour, stood straight in the air like a sort of flag telling the world he was a curious animal. Bristle was different since he was a child. Bristle listened, to the wind and the grass, to the crows making a noise on the fence, to the throbbing of the dumb earth under the mud, as the other piglets squealed and struggled to reach the milk.

Bristle discovered that there was more than one language in the world as a child. The atmosphere of mud talked of rain and drought. Other places than the farm the fence was talking about. During the night when the moon made the barn silver Bristle dreamed of taking a journey up to his pen, not to escape, but to know.

Bristle would never run to the trough, and this would make the farmer laugh. That is the trouble with that pig, he would say, he thinks too much. But Bristle wasn't lazy. He was patient. He noticed how the chickens had the order and the cows ran away before the clouds appeared in the sky in case of a storm. He has been educated that it was not only about being strong to survive but to be conscious.

It was one black autumn afternoon when the sky came black. Bristle smelled lightning before other people. He did not scream in horror, but in haste, and beat the door of the barn to open. The storm burst in with the pounding of the rain, drum-like, upon the land, and the animals were scattered in. When the farmer came home, wet and shocked, everything was well with the animals.

Since then Bristle had been treated in other ways. The farmer no longer laughed. He gazed at the pig with reverence, and when he was still longer before he closed the gate, leaving Bristle to chance. And Bristle was not going, that knowing the world was not composed of abandoning it.

And when the winter came Bristle wrapped into the straw, and was listening. The farm had been grovelling under frost. Bristle rested his eyes contented. He was taught that even a pig - so dirty, neglected, commonplace, in the mud, could be a protector, philosopher and possessor of silent knowledge.

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