The first spotted pig we had was a male. We named him Merle because if he had been a dog his color would have been described as merle. Not original I’ll agree, but it worked.

When we went to get him, he was running with his mother and another 6 or 7 black pigs. He was the only one who wasn’t black and of course he was the one Tammy wanted. At least we got to see his mother, even if it was literally in passing.  The pen they were in was about 75 X 75, with no place to trap the pigs. Of course, they were all running. The owners were two teenagers armed with laundry baskets. As the babies ran by, they would bend over and drop the laundry baskets over them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. They were not happy we wanted a specific piglet. It took about an hour and finally we got them crowded along one fenceline. Tammy made a tackle dive as Merle went past and caught him by a hind leg, then rolled with him into a ball.

Merle turned out to be a great pet. He loved acorns and would graze for hours in the fall when they fell from the trees. He also liked to greet the mailman every day. They developed a routine and we got our mail delivered to our door even when there wasn’t a package. Merle was a very vocal pig and he would greet his friend every day with grunts and chirps. This was back in the day when you could make a recording and set it as a ring tone for your phone. The driver had the unique ring tone of pig greetings.

He came inside whenever he wanted, usually at night and could easily navigate the stairs. Our stairs are straight and open to the hallway on one side. One morning Merle was coming down the stairs and the dogs were playing in the hallway below. Ever curious, Merle turned to see what they were doing and tripped himself. He rolled and tumbled over half the stairway and I couldn’t catch him or stop his fall. He landed at the bottom, got up, shook himself off and went to see what the dogs were doing. Pigs are not delicate animals.

Wineries were just becoming tourist spots at the time and Merle loved to visit both the places and the people. One of our favorite wineries was a fledgling vineyard that had a canopy on a big grass lawn as a tasting room. It had a picnic table that the owner would use to pour the wines and he kept a few ice chests for the wines that needed to be chilled. Merle would lie down next to Tammy’s chair. If visitors came up to him, he would stand up or entice them to give him a belly rub, then go back to his blanket. If he needed to go to the bathroom during a long afternoon, he would jump up and go running out across the lawn to the far side and around behind some bushes. He would emerge a short time later and trot back to his blanket and go back to sleep until the next visitors arrived to fawn over him.