Bacon for breakfast

Since August, I’ve been host to an uninvited guest and the overwhelming advice I’ve received on how to deal with him is to eat him. Trust me, if my well-meaning friends caught a glimpse of him on arrival, they’d never dream of putting such a sad little creature on their plates. I didn’t think it was possible for a potbellied pig to have an inverted belly, but there he was, looking as if he had come from a cartoon of misfortune.

If you know me you know I’m a sucker for animals.

I am known for accidentally bringing animals home, and I think my family and friends believed I was making up stories about how these pigs kept showing up at my house. When the recent viral video of a potbelly pig getting caught on I-40 came out, one of my friends joked, “He’s on his way to Jessica’s house!”

I refuse to name my uninvited guest, but if I had to, I would choose a name that is synonymous with destruction.

Since his first appearance on the property he made himself at home by breaking through my fences to get to my other pigs. I didn’t realize it at first, but he would even sleep in their houses and eat their food. For two days in a row, I was convinced he had found his way back home, only to realize he was shacked up with my females. (the last thing I need are more piglets)

When he got bored of being in the enclosure, he’d break through the fence again to freedom. For weeks, he wreaked havoc, toppling storage bins full of feed, creating a mess that looked like a mini tornado had hit and strutting his stuff for anyone who happened to wander by.

Even though I was feeding him (in hopes he wouldn’t destroy everything), if I tried to get close and pet him he would pin his head down and paw the dirt intensely. Okay tough guy!

Even though he wasn’t mine, my neighbors would update me on “my pig’s” latest antics, stirring up chaos like he was born for it. I looked into rehoming him, but it always required me to catch him and get him into a trailer—a task I find impossible.

This nonsense went on longer than I care to admit, and then he crossed the line. I discovered him digging in our family pet cemetery, where we had lovingly laid our departed animals to rest.

Determined to put an end to his reign of havoc, I constructed a “piggy jail”—a high-security pig pen to keep him from mating with my females, uprooting graves, or demolishing a week’s worth of animal feed.

I’m not a cruel person, so I also built him a nice little house. I posted a picture of him peacefully sleeping in his new home and my friend asked “Did he build it himself?” Okay so I’m resourceful but I am no Frank Lloyd Wright.

A couple weeks went by before he destroyed the pig house. Three weeks later, he destroyed that house too, and then he demolished another one just a few days ago.

I felt frustrated. However, with temperatures dipping into freezing digits, using the pieces I had left over I reconstructed his house last weekend. He watched me struggle and as soon as I put in the last screw he made the whole building sway back and forth as he used it to scratch his neck.

What do they say about insanity again?

Now after all of this nonsense you’ll never guess where I found him this morning before heading into work?

My uninvited guest was peacefully sleeping on the outside of his house.

So I went inside thought about my life choices and had bacon for breakfast.