Samantha Burns had a post yesterday summarizing stories of stupid people doing stupid things with wild animals – and paying the consequences. I love stories with happy endings!
It also reminded me of a close animal encounter in our own family (no, not this or this). And no, we weren’t doing anything we shouldn’t have been doing.
When the Mall Diva was about four the Reverend Mother and I took her to the Renaissance Festival with the requisite stop at its petting zoo. In the pen that year, along with the standard sheep and goats, was a dark, Vietnamese pot-bellied pig (nothing says Middle Ages like the trendy pet of the year). The RM filled her cupped hands with grain and squatted down next to the pre-Diva to feed a hungry young goat; both kids were delighted. The sinister pig, already foreshadowed for you, began to snuffle its way innocently over to my young family. Casually approaching from behind it then suddenly and without warning or provocation lifted its head and nipped my wife on the seat of her pants. Since the pants were knit and fit her in a way that I like, you can assume that the pig got more than fabric. With a sudden whoop my wife, the corn and the pig all scattered in different but more or less vertical directions while several strangers lamented that they didn’t have a videocamera when they needed one.
Fortunately, while her concentration may have been broken, my wife’s skin wasn’t and it turned into a good laugh all around. Since all the acts at the festival are into their role-playing I just figured the pig thought it was the Italian Renaissance Festival and acted accordingly.
