By The Way
Hibernation is not for hogs By Emory Jones
M
y pet pig, Cunningham, is so sick and tired of all this covert COVID mess, he decided to teach himself to hibernate until it’s over. My wife, Judy, is all for the plan, but I’m bad against it.
First of all, can you imagine how bad a hog’s breath will be after he’s been sleeping for two or three months? It’s bad enough now. Anyway, pigs aren’t natural hibernators. If they were, hog farms would close for the winter. I believe this foolishness is actually more about eating than sleeping. This silliness started when Cunningham saw a documentary about bears on the Ursidae TV channel a few days back. He especially liked the part about them eating themselves silly so they can get fat enough to sleep through the winter. So, when the first cold snap hit, and Judy was on a sleepover at her mama’s house, Cunningham saw his chance. He’d already started the “eating himself silly” part weeks earlier, so he was ready. After he downed one last bucket of table scraps, I reluctantly helped him swallow two Tylenol PMs and one of Judy’s nerve pills. Cunningham soon went to sleep behind the sofa under a pile of my old leisure suits for what he assumed would be a long winter’s nap. Unfortunately, the pig suffers from sleep apathy, and his snoring kept me up for a good ten minutes. We were both still snoozing when Judy got home the next morning and decided to do some much-needed vacuuming. And for some reason I still don’t understand, she decided to vacuum behind the couch where Cunningham was busy hibernating. I guess she wasn’t expecting to find a pig back there, because it startled her and Cunningham both when she vacuumed up against his little pork butt. Judy squealed almost as loud as the pig and threw the vacuum cleaner clean across the room where it landed on top of the mantelpiece. Thinking he hadn’t eaten in three months, the pig smacked his lips and lit out after Judy when she ran from the room. I imagine he assumed she was rushing to fix him a large post-hibernation breakfast. Anyway, when Judy hit the kitchen, her cat, Rowdy Yates, jumped on top of the pig and stayed there by sinking his claws into the poor pig’s fatback. Judy didn’t shut the front door fast enough to keep the squealing Cunningham from racing outside with the attached feline howling all 57 known cat noises at the same time. The neighbors thought an air raid siren had gone off. The dogs in our area love chasing cats and pigs, but seldom get to. They saw this chance to chase both of them together as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
68 GML - November 2020
