I have this wonderful book, called Ninety-Five from time to time I will post stories from it. It's a wonderful book filled with stories and photographs by rescuers, caregivers, and animal lovers that will show you a side of these animals that you may not have though possible. Some of the animals will make you chuckle, others will move you, some may bring tears to your eyes, and some will give you something to think about. All of them are fascinating. It is called Ninety-Five because that is the average number of animals spared annually by one person's vegan diet (food alone)! How fabulous! Just by my food choices alone, I am saving roughly 100 animals a year!! Feels great!
LUCAS: PIG LOVE
Pigs may "speak" the same emotional language as all other sentiments - same desires, same hopes, same loves - but they look like us doing it - wrinkled noses, smiling lips, round cheeks, bare bellies and all - and the feeling of resemblance is probably mutual. They smile, spy, inquire, scold with their eyes, they gape in wonder, they cheat with calculated coolness, they slump in defeat, they shrug in confusion, they laugh out loud with open-mouthed enthusiasm, they play pranks, they play video games, they take shower, they get drunk given half a chance, they wallow in the mud in the best sense of the word: literally, copiously, with innocent and earthy abandon, they raise families together, swap nanny duties, sing to their babies while nursing. They sleep prodigally, and dream vividly, and they do it together, as a form of communion, communication and community building. They have favorite friends and favorite foes. They hold grudges, they forgive. They make eye contact with the clear understanding that eyes are where questions are asked, and answered. They fall in love like we do - to the exclusion of everyone else, madly, passionately, desperately in love.
Lucas, for instance, is in love with Petunia. There are eight other sows in his adoptive sounder. He eats with them, hangs out with them, cribs with them. They're friends, they do what friends do - play, banter, argue, bicker, make up, learn from each other, tease each other, forgive each other, kep each other warm, share the pleasures and perils of the soul together. Ernestine, Agnes, Bessie, Elsie, Iris, Charlette, Sienna, and Sunshine. None of the compares to Petunia.
Petunia is wild, independent, self-sufficient. She walks alone, sleeps alone, eats alone, ignores the pig sounder, ignores visitors, ignores Lucas. She is a maverick, a loner happiest in her own company.
To most sanctuary residents, she is someone to avoid. To Lucas, she is someone to adore - well worth leaving his hard earned place in his adoptive sounder for, well worth leaving his other projects and explorations, worth forsaking food and water for. She stops him dead in his tracks. She is compelling, arresting, electrifying. With her, in presence, he seems to find that mysterious something he craves, that something which is worth pursuing even at the risk of unleashing Petunia's wrath.
Lucas is a risk taker. An explorer. Driven by pigly "what ifs?," "What else?," "whys?," "hows?? A sui(dae) generis adventurer. Happiest in unknown territory, happiest if there's resistance, a force to push against, life that doesn't yield, but pushes back, like a sort of dynamic stability. A swinely swashbuckler. Driven by the need to influence the world around him rather than conform to its offerings (and his constant questioning and challenging of the world inevitably changes it). What, to others, is only a towel drying on a fence, to him is a potential link, a possible portal into something much bigger. What, to others, is the wild and furious pig known as Petunia, to him is wild, dangerous, virgin territory - a place no one else is willing to go, and the only destination that interests him - something irresistible.
Most of the time, his hunch that there is more things than meets the eye is confirmed. For instance, pulling on that towel was far more than a tug on a soggy piece of terry cloth drying on a fence. It ended up being a cataclysm. It resulted in a series f events that brought down the entire fence, released a small flock of quarantined chickens into the pond yard, almost caused them to drown, and created a commotion of a magnitude that no one looking at that small napkin would have imagined. Similarly, jumping off the truck that was taking him and his family to their final fattening place was far more than a leap. It resulted in a series of events that saved his life, secured his future, and opened a new world. Literally.
He is a discoverer. Consumed with porcine curiosity. Driven by questions - those silent, inner current that move us, sentiments, to know, grow, go farther. You can almost heat the irresistible question behind Lucas' every imperious action. And it's almost impossible not to want to know the answer. "What is I chase a horse? "What is I bathe in the drinking water fountain? "What if I push this baby stroller around, screaming baby and all? "What if I break into the people house, teat open the feed bags and sounder that rejected me time after time?" "What is I leave the sky-less put I was born into?""What lies beyond is brushing cement walls?" "What is I pursue Petunia, the baddest, meanest pig around? ...And he throws himself into these questions, with total fearlessness, total abandon. The answer seems to be worth the risk or asking. It's not just moxie. It is an explorer's personality, curiosity, and cross.
Had he not escaped, he would have been caged, shoulder to shoulder, with thousands of other young captives like himself, fattened in tghe dark stench of a pig farm, crammed in a truck with dozens of other terrified victims, driven to the slaughterhouse in his final, frightened journey, and killed in cold blood, execution style: no hesitation, no mercy, no remorse.
Someone with Lucas' personality would have fought to his last breath. He would not have accepted him tragic life as inevitable. He would have struggled, scraped, screamed, expressed more vocally, and more visibly than others the absolute despair of being a suffering soul buried alive in a cement grave, condemned to a short, excremental existence, murdered for a taste. He would have lost.
By contrast, a docile pig like Oscar would have frozen in silent despair. He would have focused every bit of his energy on enduring, suffering, bearing, the unbearable. He would have tried to accept, not challenge, the relentless misery inflicted on him. He would have spent his short time on earth like most farmed animals - taking the beatings and mutilation, and the sunless hell of his existence, the way abused children take the abuse: as though it were their only worth, and their only identity - without that, they are nothing.
Lucas in one of the few pigs in the world who is unscathed by the atrocities of farming. He's been free most of his life. Free to experience the world's terrible beauty on his own terms, and free to be increased by it, or crushed by it. Free to deeply wounded and deeply healed. Free to grow from his own mistakes. Free to fall in love, and fall hard. He does.
He approaches Petunia, usually at dusk, when everybody is out, active, and eagerly anticipating dinner, before the long night's rest. He is well aware of the danger - Petunia bit, boxed, bashed, pushed, plugged, punched, slammed, slugged, and threw him down before. But he approaches her anyway.
He swaggers suavely towards her, snorts sweetly, tiptoes behind her, what's left of his tail, politely, submissively down, head bowed, eyes courteously averted. She either ignores him or scolds and spanks him. He comes ack for more - nose in the breeze of her being, eyes half-closed, as though inhaling the rarest perfume, mouth parted in ecstatic smile, and emitting a series of soft, gurgling whimpers to sweeten her mood, cooing in her eat like a dove - singing to her in languages that she may not understand but her heart may , will, must. And he, the unchallenged Bad-Bold-Beautiful-Bodacious Boy of the sanctuary, lowers his head, blinks shyly, and whimpers submissively when Petunia shoves him.
There is no mistaking that Lucas' stream of infatuated sounds at Petunia's side is a serenade of love, submission, supplication, seduction, scintillation. Nothing compares to Petunia, nothing distracts him from her. He follow her around while she is engrossed in foraging for tasty tidbits. She totally ignores hi. He totally ignores her food finds. Even though he pretends to be interested in everything she uncovers, eats, and praises in low contented grunts, he never tries to touch any of those delicacies. It's just a way to get closer and stay closer longer, while she is occupied with that morsel. It's not the food , it's the fact that their noses are on the same scent-length, and, while she is rapt in her found treat, she suffers his cheek touching hers.
This is where he wants to be. This is his hog heaven. He has a while sanctuary, a whole world of freedom to explore - and he does - but what he craves most is the small, dangerous, mysterious world that unfolds only Petunia's side. He lover her. She is his greatest, most burning question - one perhaps only Lucas questions you almost don't want to know the answer to. "Will you love me back?"
-Joanne Lucas
Lucas, for instance, is in love with Petunia. There are eight other sows in his adoptive sounder. He eats with them, hangs out with them, cribs with them. They're friends, they do what friends do - play, banter, argue, bicker, make up, learn from each other, tease each other, forgive each other, kep each other warm, share the pleasures and perils of the soul together. Ernestine, Agnes, Bessie, Elsie, Iris, Charlette, Sienna, and Sunshine. None of the compares to Petunia.
Petunia is wild, independent, self-sufficient. She walks alone, sleeps alone, eats alone, ignores the pig sounder, ignores visitors, ignores Lucas. She is a maverick, a loner happiest in her own company.
To most sanctuary residents, she is someone to avoid. To Lucas, she is someone to adore - well worth leaving his hard earned place in his adoptive sounder for, well worth leaving his other projects and explorations, worth forsaking food and water for. She stops him dead in his tracks. She is compelling, arresting, electrifying. With her, in presence, he seems to find that mysterious something he craves, that something which is worth pursuing even at the risk of unleashing Petunia's wrath.
Lucas is a risk taker. An explorer. Driven by pigly "what ifs?," "What else?," "whys?," "hows?? A sui(dae) generis adventurer. Happiest in unknown territory, happiest if there's resistance, a force to push against, life that doesn't yield, but pushes back, like a sort of dynamic stability. A swinely swashbuckler. Driven by the need to influence the world around him rather than conform to its offerings (and his constant questioning and challenging of the world inevitably changes it). What, to others, is only a towel drying on a fence, to him is a potential link, a possible portal into something much bigger. What, to others, is the wild and furious pig known as Petunia, to him is wild, dangerous, virgin territory - a place no one else is willing to go, and the only destination that interests him - something irresistible.
Most of the time, his hunch that there is more things than meets the eye is confirmed. For instance, pulling on that towel was far more than a tug on a soggy piece of terry cloth drying on a fence. It ended up being a cataclysm. It resulted in a series f events that brought down the entire fence, released a small flock of quarantined chickens into the pond yard, almost caused them to drown, and created a commotion of a magnitude that no one looking at that small napkin would have imagined. Similarly, jumping off the truck that was taking him and his family to their final fattening place was far more than a leap. It resulted in a series of events that saved his life, secured his future, and opened a new world. Literally.
He is a discoverer. Consumed with porcine curiosity. Driven by questions - those silent, inner current that move us, sentiments, to know, grow, go farther. You can almost heat the irresistible question behind Lucas' every imperious action. And it's almost impossible not to want to know the answer. "What is I chase a horse? "What is I bathe in the drinking water fountain? "What if I push this baby stroller around, screaming baby and all? "What if I break into the people house, teat open the feed bags and sounder that rejected me time after time?" "What is I leave the sky-less put I was born into?""What lies beyond is brushing cement walls?" "What is I pursue Petunia, the baddest, meanest pig around? ...And he throws himself into these questions, with total fearlessness, total abandon. The answer seems to be worth the risk or asking. It's not just moxie. It is an explorer's personality, curiosity, and cross.
Had he not escaped, he would have been caged, shoulder to shoulder, with thousands of other young captives like himself, fattened in tghe dark stench of a pig farm, crammed in a truck with dozens of other terrified victims, driven to the slaughterhouse in his final, frightened journey, and killed in cold blood, execution style: no hesitation, no mercy, no remorse.
Someone with Lucas' personality would have fought to his last breath. He would not have accepted him tragic life as inevitable. He would have struggled, scraped, screamed, expressed more vocally, and more visibly than others the absolute despair of being a suffering soul buried alive in a cement grave, condemned to a short, excremental existence, murdered for a taste. He would have lost.
By contrast, a docile pig like Oscar would have frozen in silent despair. He would have focused every bit of his energy on enduring, suffering, bearing, the unbearable. He would have tried to accept, not challenge, the relentless misery inflicted on him. He would have spent his short time on earth like most farmed animals - taking the beatings and mutilation, and the sunless hell of his existence, the way abused children take the abuse: as though it were their only worth, and their only identity - without that, they are nothing.
Lucas in one of the few pigs in the world who is unscathed by the atrocities of farming. He's been free most of his life. Free to experience the world's terrible beauty on his own terms, and free to be increased by it, or crushed by it. Free to deeply wounded and deeply healed. Free to grow from his own mistakes. Free to fall in love, and fall hard. He does.
He approaches Petunia, usually at dusk, when everybody is out, active, and eagerly anticipating dinner, before the long night's rest. He is well aware of the danger - Petunia bit, boxed, bashed, pushed, plugged, punched, slammed, slugged, and threw him down before. But he approaches her anyway.
He swaggers suavely towards her, snorts sweetly, tiptoes behind her, what's left of his tail, politely, submissively down, head bowed, eyes courteously averted. She either ignores him or scolds and spanks him. He comes ack for more - nose in the breeze of her being, eyes half-closed, as though inhaling the rarest perfume, mouth parted in ecstatic smile, and emitting a series of soft, gurgling whimpers to sweeten her mood, cooing in her eat like a dove - singing to her in languages that she may not understand but her heart may , will, must. And he, the unchallenged Bad-Bold-Beautiful-Bodacious Boy of the sanctuary, lowers his head, blinks shyly, and whimpers submissively when Petunia shoves him.
There is no mistaking that Lucas' stream of infatuated sounds at Petunia's side is a serenade of love, submission, supplication, seduction, scintillation. Nothing compares to Petunia, nothing distracts him from her. He follow her around while she is engrossed in foraging for tasty tidbits. She totally ignores hi. He totally ignores her food finds. Even though he pretends to be interested in everything she uncovers, eats, and praises in low contented grunts, he never tries to touch any of those delicacies. It's just a way to get closer and stay closer longer, while she is occupied with that morsel. It's not the food , it's the fact that their noses are on the same scent-length, and, while she is rapt in her found treat, she suffers his cheek touching hers.
This is where he wants to be. This is his hog heaven. He has a while sanctuary, a whole world of freedom to explore - and he does - but what he craves most is the small, dangerous, mysterious world that unfolds only Petunia's side. He lover her. She is his greatest, most burning question - one perhaps only Lucas questions you almost don't want to know the answer to. "Will you love me back?"
-Joanne Lucas
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