[Gpdd] RAINBOW BRIDGE Gingerbread Piggyfriend

[Penny Charlesworth]

We are all very sad here at Piggyfriends as we have had to say farewell to our dear friend Gingerbread.

I was hoping against hope that she would be able to attend the forthcoming birthday party and also celebrate her own 7th. birthday soon on the 1st. May but it was not to be. 

For the last week she has worried me in that she has slept more and more and eaten less and less. There was nothing physically wrong with her but the years finally caught up with her in the small hours of this morning and she drifted off peacefully to join her family at the Rainbow Bridge.

Some of you will know her story and it is in the archives somewhere but I will repeat a short version of it here for newer members and in tribute to a wonderful old lady. She was the senior Piggyfriend, this position now being taken by SCAMP Roscoe ( as far as I know ). Many Piggyfriends arrive here as adults and I never know their true age.

Gingerbread and her sister Mayflower were born here on May 1st. 2003. I collected them in utero with mother Ginger and her other baby daughters, Diamond and Peridot. This was a back to back pregnancy for a five year old sow who had lived wild in a garden and whose "owners" had not even known that she was pregnant either time. For a five year old to give birth for the first time unaided and alone outdoors in winter was a miracle in itself so when the new babes were born, I was not surprised to greet two tiny runts. They were so tiny and wobbly that I never expected them to survive, especially when poor Ginger had no milk for them. They took to being hand reared and thrived, Ginger caring for them in every other way, their older sisters mothering them too and the five of them lived together happily for many years.

Gingerbread was the last of the "Ginger Girls" so another Piggyfriends chapter has come to an end.

All of the family were lovely cuddle pigs, always willing to be held by a visitor.

After so many years it is hard to believe that Gingerbread has gone although I will see her every morning as her pigture is the wallpaper on my computer, chosen for her bright white coat over which the icons are readily visible. I won't change it.

I had started to compose a Disneyworld birthday story in which she reminisced about her long life along with Janet's Lily but when Lily passed away, I scrapped it. Maybe they will meet up at the Rainbow Bridge and have a chat there.

Right now, I don't feel up to writing a Birthday story but I cannot wallow in grief as there is a host of Piggyfriends here needing my attention. Grief is the price we pay for caring for these wonderful little treasures. Gingerbread is buried amongst the daffodils under the big old oak tree that gives them all shade when they go out on the lawn in the summer.

There are pigtures of Gingerbread and some of her family on the SCAMPS page. Scroll down about three quarters of the page.

http://scamps-gpdd.blogspot.com/search/label/Piggyfriends

Farewell lovely Gingerbread, gone to join your dear family at the Rainbow Bridge, where there will never be a shortage of grass and clover such as we had during the last long, dark winter.

Penny and the sad Piggyfriends.