Esther the Wonder Pig

by Steve Jenkins

  As we Esther-proofed the house, we learned what she could and couldn’t get into with her little shovel-snout. (Answer: There is almost nothing she can’t get into.)

  Our formidable opponent also resurfaced when it came to her water bowl. In the battles we fought with Esther, this very nearly was our Waterloo. Esther enjoyed flipping the bowl over. It was quite large and thus could hold a whole lot of water. We’re not sure what pleasure she derived from it; maybe she just did it because she could—kind of like dogs licking their privates. Whatever the case, over the bowl would go, making a huge mess.

  At first, this didn’t seem like such a big problem. If the bowl itself didn’t contain too much water, she couldn’t make too much of a mess, right? So we got a large watercooler that would release water into the bowl automatically when the water got low. Easy. We cross-tied bungee cords to fasten the cooler to the back of the cupboards. That worked until the bungee cords lost some of their elasticity, at which point Esther was able to work her snout under the cooler.

  Yeah, you see where this is going.

  It was quite a scene the day she flipped the entire cooler over. Noah wasn’t prepared for a flood this size. Water gushed across the kitchen and living room floors, and dogs and cats jumped to higher ground on the couches. Then Reuben slinked his way into the bedroom, and Shelby looked traumatized. Esther lay down in the middle of it all, flopping around like it was the greatest day of her life. (To her, it probably was.)

  Undaunted, we stepped up to the challenge. Or rather, Derek did—he’s the handy one. He gets it from his dad. Derek decided to screw a water bowl into the wall. Let her try to move that. I still remember him standing there with his arms crossed, looking very pleased with himself, and then his look of absolute disbelief as Esther tore off the bolts and knocked the whole thing over. The next move was to try a very large and very shallow bowl, two-and-a-half feet wide and only three inches deep, something she couldn’t possibly get any leverage to flip. By now, you can figure out how that turned out.

  The only thing that stopped it—and to this day I can’t tell you why—was putting a small amount of juice in her water bowl. Strange, right? We found this out one day when Esther wasn’t feeling well. She was picking at her food for the first time ever. She was walking much more slowly and hanging her head low. She looked exactly how I feel when I’m sick. She was also making little grunts and huffs and was listless. She also had a look in her eyes and an expression on her face that I didn’t recognize. This wasn’t our happy girl. She looked “down.” She wasn’t much interested in exploring or going outside. All she did was slowly pace around the house making her little noises and standing still in strange places like she was lost and out of sorts.

  During this illness, the biggest difference was with her drinking. She typically loved water (both to drink and to swim in), but when she stopped drinking altogether, it was clear Esther definitely wasn’t herself. And I was beside myself. I desperately wanted to know what she was feeling so I could fix it. But just like with any other animal (or an infant, for that matter), when you can’t communicate directly with the ill party, you feel helpless. What was wrong with our baby?

  I called the vet immediately, just like any nervous parent feeling desperate for answers. The vet said that pigs are just as susceptible to things like the common cold as humans are, that Esther most likely just had a virus, so we should make sure she stayed hydrated. We’d read somewhere that if you think your pet pig might be dehydrated, put a splash of juice in the pig’s water bowl. So we did, and sure enough, she drank it. Just as important, she didn’t flip the bowl. We kept adding a little juice to the water, Esther kept drinking, and soon enough she’d flushed the virus out of her system.

  Our little princess was happy and healthy again. I was relieved. I was jubilant.

  And so we stopped putting the juice in her water.

  And she refused to drink it.

  That’s not all. As you’ve already guessed, she went back to flipping the bowl over. Pour in some juice, she’s a perfect little lady. Give her plain water? Bitch, please. Flipped bowl and a dirty look directed at her dads.

  So now, we give her water with a little bit of juice. Everybody’s happy. I don’t know who’s training whom here, but there you go. That’s how we do things now.

  Of course, every time we thought we had things figured out, we’d learn how wrong we were. For example: groceries on top of the stove. (Those of you with big dogs probably see this one coming.) We knew she could get into the lower cabinets, we knew the freezer (which was at the bottom of the unit) needed to be taped shut and that our best bet was to keep it empty, but we never thought (at least at first) that she could get to groceries all the way on top of the stove. You can imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen and found Esther with her front hooves on the stove, stretched out taller than I am, her nose buried in the bag. I shouted Esther’s name at the top of my lungs, startling her.

  This was one of those (many) times when we learned that a startled Esther is not a good thing. Because as she tried to extricate herself from the situation, she ended up bringing the stove down with her. I don’t know what scared Esther more, my yelling or the crashing of the stove and all the groceries. But Esther hightailed it out of there and down the hall.

  The front of our stove remained broken. The freezer door was also broken, because she opened it thirty times a day. This is because there was a time when we did keep food in there, and Esther never forgets food. Memories of frozen edamame pods dance like sugarplums in her head. And as delightful as that memory might be to her, the way we remember it is this: Esther’s teeth attached to one end of the bag, us holding on to the other, neither letting go until the bag split in half—and suddenly it was raining edamame. (Hallelujah!)

  We’ve learned our lessons—sometimes more than once—but we ultimately learned that we can’t keep anything she wants in the kitchen. And to the day we moved out of that home, we still had to make sure we’d secured our freezer with clear box tape, because she still tried to get in there. She was just like a human, the way we will look inside the refrigerator hoping to find something interesting to eat, even though we already looked in there an hour ago. It’s as if we hope something new will magically appear.

  Trying to keep up with Esther’s calculating mind was a battle of wits. She was such a quick study that anytime we were somehow able to outsmart her, it seemed worthy of celebration. It was almost embarrassing: two grown men wanting to pop a champagne bottle for figuring out what kind of tape was most effective at keeping a pig from getting into the fridge. But she’s so clever that it usually took several tries before something would work. It became like a game, and we were happy with any victories we could get. Because as insane as some (or all) of these adjustments may have been… she was our baby. When she nuzzles her face as close as she can get to you, just because she wants to connect and let you know she loves you too, there’s nothing better. She was worth it all and then some.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The holidays were approaching and by now Esther was well over four hundred pounds. Of course, the holidays are the time of year when everyone starts catching up—some people even still write those family newsletters. Newsflash: Everybody probably already knows everything you’ve done because they follow you on social media. But in Esther’s case, even though people knew we had Esther, they didn’t really know much about her, and they hadn’t seen many pictures, because we were really trying to keep her private.

  The reason for all this secrecy was that having a commercial pig was actually illegal where we live, because she’s a hooved animal. There’s a bylaw that says you’re not allowed to have farm animals. A lot of towns have different laws about keeping animals, but the hooves are where you get yourself in trouble. Even potbellied pigs get you in trouble because of this hoof ban, so we kept Esther’s presence really quiet.

  When Amanda first asked me if I wanted Esther, I immediately checked all the ru
les and regulations, so I knew full well that we weren’t allowed to have her. (By now, you’ve undoubtedly picked up on the fact that I’m the living embodiment of “It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”)

  But I figured with Esther being so small—and because I was naïve enough to think she’d stay that way—we could sneak her past those silly rules without difficulty. And if it ever should come up, well, see that previous thing about begging forgiveness afterward. I’d just play innocent: Hooves, you say? Oh, you’re kidding me! Pigs aren’t allowed in our town? I had no idea!

  I was planning to put up a wooden fence for privacy anyway and figured because we had two dogs, anyone who did catch a quick glimpse would assume Esther was just a puppy. A pink puppy. With a mushy little snout. Plus, we had a great relationship with most of our neighbors, so we didn’t think they would be a problem either.

  So in keeping with the “hush hush” of it all, only our really close friends and immediate family got to see Esther. For them, we thought, we would start a Facebook page exclusively about Esther. It would be a way for friends and family we didn’t see often to keep up with her adventures, to see pictures and understand what it was like for us to be living with Esther. I suppose by we, I actually mean me, because (I hope you’re sitting down) I didn’t tell Derek I was doing it—I just created the Facebook page while he was getting ready to go out one night. It wasn’t until we were in the car a little later that I told him I’d done it.

  It seems funny to think about, making a dedicated Facebook page for a pig, but it was important to me to share with the people closest to us what our life had become with Esther. The first post was something totally generic. We hadn’t found Esther’s “voice” yet, so one of the pictures was of Esther indoors with a caption like, What, you’ve never seen a pig in the house? There was no direction; I didn’t know what I was doing or that this was going to become a thing.

  Here’s how it actually went down. The night I launched the page, Derek and I were going to dinner at my aunt Erin and uncle Stu’s house in Orangeville. It was December 4, 2013. While Derek was still getting dressed, I was messing around on Facebook, working on the page I’d built for my real estate business. I was familiar with the process of building pages and had the app on my phone, and I got the idea for Esther’s page. So I sat on the couch and built it using the pictures I had on my phone.

  Derek was ready to go before I was finished, so he ended up waiting for me, standing over me and tapping his foot as I put the finishing touches on the bio. That first post consisted of two or three pictures, and I wasn’t even thinking too much about what I was doing. I mean, who was going to see it? By the time Derek was standing at the door with his coat on, telling me we had to leave now, I just thought, What the hell! I selected a first post, pressed the Go Live button, and that was it. We flew out the door, now running a bit behind schedule for dinner, and raced to Orangeville.

  We were just a few minutes into the drive, me at the wheel, when I told Derek to take out his phone. Usually, this isn’t something I’d do, because if I’m driving and he’s Facebooking, I feel like I’m just a chauffeur. But in this case, I had something exciting to show him. He looked confused, so I explained.

  “Esther has her own Facebook page now.”

  His look went from confused to… more confused.

  “Did she create it herself?” he asked, now understanding full well what I had been so preoccupied with before we left.

  Derek pulled up the page. He read through the bio and immediately said he had a few things he wanted to add, so I made him an administrator. Well, I handed him my phone and told him to add himself, and then he just started playing with it. Throughout the ride, we kept seeing Likes and Comments, and Derek would read them aloud and we just laughed. We discussed the page settings and went back and forth between having Esther listed as a “pet” versus a “public figure,” but we settled on “pet.”

  Little did we know what was to come.

  By the time we got to Orangeville, the page had already gained close to one hundred followers. This was only a 45-minute drive. Where were these Likes and Comments coming from, and how was this happening so fast? By the time we finished dinner, I looked at the page, and it had over 150 Likes. This was all within a couple of hours. I got excited and thought, Huh, that was really quick. I showed the page to my uncle, because he was one of the people we had made the page for, and even he was wondering who those 150 people were.

  My aunt and uncle are super fun. They both have the greatest sense of humor. Stu has the greatest stories ever, and my aunt Erin is always there, shaking her head and laughing along with the rest of us. Their sense of humor also meant they found it hilarious that we had been screwed and had a massive pig in our tiny house. To this day I jokingly tell them they are Esther’s godparents.

  I added another photo while we were at dinner and kept sneaking off by myself to see how many new Likes we had and what the Comments were. I immediately noticed many names I didn’t recognize popping up, along with old friends I forgot I was even connected with. By the time we were leaving my uncle’s house, the page had almost three hundred Likes. By the next morning, it had a thousand. The following day, it was two thousand. And the page just took off from there.

  We didn’t really understand what was happening or why. It turned out that a lot of our followers came within the first two or three days, mostly through a friend of mine who was part of Toronto Pig Save and who had shared our page. So our initial push came from the animal rights people, and we had a really strong vegan following, and then the general public just started finding out about us and falling in love with Esther. And so the page just skyrocketed.

  Sounds great, right?

  Well…

  About ten days in, we started to panic. Esther’s page now had more than six thousand followers. To me, having come from a small town and having run my small business page for three years on Facebook with only about 250 followers, six thousand people might as well be the entire world. And this could be a big problem. It was illegal to have Esther in our home, and with this giant following, we were worried that the wrong people would find out about Esther: specifically, zoning officials who would know that we were not supposed to be living with livestock.

  (Okay, this might be the time when you wonder why I made the page public in the first place. Where were you when I needed you? Who am I, Mark Zuckerberg? You know I just forge ahead without thinking about consequences.)

  I was also naïve enough to think that every single one of these thousands of people was from Georgetown and could potentially turn us in. I was convinced the whole town would show up and take Esther away in a van. (I’ve always had a vivid imagination.) So I contemplated pulling down the Facebook page. I made an appointment with a lawyer to find out just how deep a hole I had dug for us.

  The lawyer confirmed that it was illegal for us to have Esther, but he also broke down the entire situation for us. He said it would take about eight months before anyone from the town could actually make us get rid of Esther. He said the first thing the town would do was fine us. We’d pay the fine, but we wouldn’t get rid of Esther, of course. So then they’d fine us again. And then we’d go to court, and then we’d get tied up in court, and then ultimately it would end up in an order from the town telling us that we had to get rid of her.

  So even though the end of that story wasn’t necessarily good news—not that we had any reason to expect good news—it was good in the sense that we knew the town officials couldn’t just show up out of the blue and take Esther away from us on the spot, which was what I’d been fearing since the Facebook page had taken off. If someone from the town did catch on and press us on the issue, it would be a long, drawn-out process. We’d know it was happening as it happened.

  We also knew we had eight months to figure things out—and that was eight months starting from whenever we were contacted by the town, which hadn’t happened yet. But we wanted to be prepared
. Derek and I knew we most likely had to move anyway. Esther was still growing and we had no idea how big she would get, so we’d already decided to look for a small country property. This just put more of an official timeline on that plan.

  Still, we knew this legal problem could cause us a world of hurt—we could face fees we absolutely couldn’t afford, and we would have to fight a case we would ultimately lose. When we lost, we would either need to move anyway or give up Esther to stay where we were. (Obviously, I did not consider the latter an option.)

  If we did need to move, that was another issue in itself. Where would we go that would allow us both to work but still be country property that we could afford and that would be suitable for Esther? Georgetown is a very expensive place to live, so a country property close to town in our budget would be in shambles or be a gas station or something else unspeakable like that.

  Still, when we left the lawyer’s office, we weighed the pros and cons and just decided to keep the Esther page going. Ultimately, we knew we would never give up Esther, and we knew we would have to find a proper place for us all to live anyway. It would happen sooner or later. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we were headed full-speed down the highway to necessity.

  The page was growing at an astronomical rate. Thousands upon thousands of people were Liking the page and falling in love with Esther. We had not expected this at all. By the first week of January 2014, we had news crews coming by and the Toronto Star doing full-page stories on Esther. (So we obviously were leaning in to the whole media attention thing. At that point, we figured, Hey, what the hell. Let’s just do this thing.)