The Honest Courtesan

Everybody knows that pigs are messy, and most people know they’re very intelligent by quadruped standards.  But do you know how strong these suckers are?  Don’t be fooled by the fat; those dirigible-with-legs shapes are mostly muscle, and since they’re rooters their heads, necks and faces are just as strong as the rest of them.  So when a piglet decides he wants out of his pen, you know what he does?  He sticks his snout under the edge and lifts.  Cicero isn’t big enough yet to just lift it clean, but he’s more than big enough to push it that way.  So if he’s out on the deck and nobody’s in sight and he wants to go inside (where his little piggy brain tells him the food is), he’ll repeatedly bump his cage over and over until he gets to the ramp, then scuttle under the edge, run around to the front door, come up the front ramp and start oinking outside the glass doors.  And this isn’t something he’s done only a couple of times, oh no; it happens about twice a week on average.  Since it’s obvious he knows where home is, and he’s getting bigger all the time, it won’t be much longer before we start letting him run free, and I’m looking forward to that; though I love Grace and I don’t really resent having to clean up after a piglet twice a day, I’d just as soon use the time and effort to do something else, thankyouverymuch.