Fespp

Did you know that pigs recognize people, remember individuals clearly, and appreciate human contact when it is not hostile? The naturalist W. H. Hudson wrote a beautiful account of a pig who:
- . not knowing my sentiments, looked askance at me and moved away when I first began to visit him. But when he made the discovery that I generally had apples and lumps of sugar in my coat pockets he all at once became excessively friendly and followed me about, and would put his head in my way to be scratched, and licked my hands with his rough tongue to show that he liked me. Every time I visited the cows and horses I had to pause beside the pigpen to open the gate into the fiel4 and invariably the pig would get up and coming towards me salute me with a friendly grunt. And I would pretend not to hear or see, for it made me sick to look at his pen in which he stood belly-deep in the fetid mire; and it made me ashamed to think that so intelligent and good-tempered an animal should be kept in such abominable conditions. -
“One morning as I passed the pen he grunted—spoke, I may say—in such a pleasant friendly way that I had to stop and return his greeting, then, taking an apple from my pocket I placed it in his trough. He turned it over with his snout, then looked up and said something like ‘Thank you’ in a series of gentle grunts. Then he bit off and ate a small piece; then another small bite; and eventually taking what was left in his mouth he finished eating it. After that, he always expected me to stay a minute and speak to him when I went to the field, I knew it from his way of greeting me, and on such occasions I gave him an apple. But he never ate it greedily; he appeared more inclined to talk than to eat, until by degrees I came to understand what he was saying. What he said was that he appreciated my kind intentions in giving him apples. But, he went on, to tell the real truth, it is not a fruit I am particularly fond of. I am familiar with its taste as they sometimes give me apples, usually the small unripe or bad ones that fall from the trees. However, I don’t actually dislike them. I get skim milk and am rather fond of it; then a bucket of mash, whith is good enough for hunger; but what I enjoy most is a cabbage, only I don’t get one very often now. I sometimes think that if they would let me out of this muddy pen to ramble like the sheep and other beasts in the field, oron the downs, Ishould be able to pick up a number of morsels which would taste better than anything they give me. Apart from the subject of food, I hope you won’t mind me telling you that I’m rather fond of being scratched on the back.
“So I scratched him vigorously with my stick and made him wriggle his body and wink and blink and smile delightedly all over his face. Then I said to myse( ‘Now what the juice can I do more to please him?’ For though under sentence of death, he had done no wron& but was a good, honest-hearted fellow mortal, so that I felt bound to do something to make the miry remnant of his existence a little less miserable.
“I think it was the word ‘juice’ I had used—for that was how I pronounced it to make it less like a swear-word—that gave me an inspiration. In the garden, a few yards back from the pen, there was a large clump of old eldertrees, now overloaded with rening fruit—the biggest clusters I had ever seen. Going to the trees, I selected and cut the finest bunch I could find, as big round as my cap, and weighing over a pound. This I deposited in his trough and invited him to try it. He snjffed at it a little doubtfully, and looked at me and made a remark or two, then nibbled at the edge of the cluster, taking a few berries into his mouth, and holding them some time before he ventured to crush them. At length he did venture, then looked at me and made more remarks, ‘Queer fruit this! Never tasted anything like it before, but I really can’t say yet whether I like it or not.’
“Then he took another bite, then more bites, looking up at me and saying something between the bites, ‘til, little by little, he had consumed the whole bunch, then, turning round, he went back to his bed with a little grunt to say that I was now at liberty to go on to the cows and horses.
“However, the following morning he hailed my approach in such a lively manner, with such a note of expectancy in his voice, that I concluded he had been thinking a great deal about elderberries, and was anxious to have another go at them. Accordingly, I cut him another bunch, which he quickly consumed, making little exclamations the while— ‘Thank you, thank you, very good, very good indeed!’ It was a new sensation in his lqe, and made him very happy, and was almost as good as a day of liberty in the fields and meadows and on the open green downs.
“From that time on I visited him two or three times a day to give him huge clusters of elderberries. There were plenty for the starlings as wel4 the clusters on those trees would have filled a cart.
“Then one morning I heard an indignant scream from the garden, and peeping out saw my friend, the pig, bound hand and foot, being lifted by a dealer into his cart with the assistance of the farmer. .
It made Hudson happy to feel he could bring cheer to the last days of this sociable and sensitive animal, destined though he was for the butcher. Of course, it is not to be expected that the average person should be quite as sensitive in translating the grunts and growls as a trained naturalist. Nevertheless I want to stress the good-naturedness of pigs because we have done them such a terrible injustice in the way we think of them, even to using their name as a vile insult.
But why have we given such a bad name to an animal who is Ml of intelligence and honest-hearted zest for life; why have we so demeaned a creature capable of endearing and lasting friendships with human beings? It would perhaps be easier to understand if we did this to the crocodile, for example, who historically has been a real threat to our lives, and seems to have something about him of the darkness. But the pig? The loyal, friendly, likeable pig?
Part of the answer, at least, is rather simple. The pig is guilty of having flesh that human beings find tasty. Since few of us have any direct experience with pigs anymore, we can think and speak of them as foul and unwholesome beasts without being disturbed by the facts of the matter. But down through the ages, people who have kept pigs have sensed their undeniable intelligence and friendliness. Only by looking the other way could human beings manage to justif’ what they have done in order to have bacon and ham, just as black humans were dehumanized in the minds of whites in order to justi& their oppression and slavery.

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