SEVEN LITTLE PIGGIES WENT TO MARKET

Today I took a walk down Memory Lane. Geez, Louise, I walked a long way, back some thirty odd years. Where was I going? Hunting. Above you can see the seven little piggies I was hunting for. One of them was my pet pig. Her name? Miss Pickles. Please bear with me. There is a method to my madness.

Back in the day, the last thing I used to do before I went to bed every night was watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He always did jokes about how pigs were smarter than dogs, so when we moved to the country and lived on ten acres of land, the first thing I wanted to buy (for a pet) was a pig. I wanted to try out Johnny's theory.

I saved my money - okay, that is a slight exaggeration since the pig only cost $25.00 - and we headed for a pig farm to make my illustrious pet purchase. The smell led us to the farm where there were lots of big mama pigs with their babies. I marveled at my numerous choices, but I finally settled on a little pink spotted piggy - weight 20 lbs. (she's the muddy little pink one in the front on the right side of the photo above). In spite of the squealing and wiggling, she went into a dog carrier in the back of the pickup and came home with us.

Her new abode was a fenced dog pen near our humongous country garden. There was a nice dog house and plenty of room for her to run around (and root up all the grass!). Thus began my campaign to domesticate my new pet and teach her some tricks. Every day I'd go out to "pet & talk" to her. I'd feed her slices of peaches from our peach trees, as well as gigantic cucumbers from our garden. This little piggy seemed to prefer the cucumbers, and she soon became a great garbage disposal for all the overgrown vegetables I'd forgotten to pick in our garden. Note to self: Gardens produce daily. Pick daily or suffer the consequences.

Anyway, I happened to be canning some dill pickles about the time my little piggy arrived on the scene, and that somehow morphed into the "perfect" name for my pet pig - Miss Pickles.

When I wrote the line in our book for Peggy to say - "Even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while." - which is an old Texas saying and not my original creation, by the way, the line just stuck in my feeble brain. It still puts in an appearance every now and then in my vocabulary. Hence, the "blind hog" saying in yesterday's post reminded me of my pet hog, and my new blogger name was born!

OMG! I just realized that name may give you the impression I am the size of a hog or that I have the personality of a pig! LOL! Are you wondering about that, or whether I ever taught my pet any tricks? I guess I'll have to continue this story in another post tomorrow to answer those questions - ha!
~ Miss Pickles (alias Sandra)