By the Way

Hibernation is not for hogs

By Emory Jones

My 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.

I don’t think Cunningham even noticed all those dogs chasing him. Because, still thinking himself to be starving, he caught wind of a fresh batch of peppermint pig pellets that were just coming off the conveyer belt at that feed mill on Cleveland’s Cemetery Street. He sprinted towards the smell, taking the hunkered down cat and an undetermined number of dogs with him. The feed mill manager later testified that not even the animal control people believed his story about a starving pig, ridden by a shrieking cat, while being chased by a pack of howling hounds, and what was later determined to be a rabid raccoon, is hard to swallow.

I would have spoken up for him, but they never called me to the stand.

Emory Jones grew up in Northeast Georgia’s White County. After a stint in the Air Force, he joined Gold Kist as publications manager. He was the Southeastern editor for Farm Journal Magazine and executive vice president at Freebarin & Company, an Atlanta-based advertising agency. He has written five books, including The Valley Where They Danced; Distant Voices: The Story of the Nacoochee Valley Indian Mound; a humorous history book called Zipping Through Georgia on a Goat Powered Time Machine; White County 101 and Heart of a Co-op--The Habersham EMC Story. Emory is known for his humor, love of history and all things Southern. He and his wife, Judy, live on Yonah Mountain near Cleveland, Georgia.