[Gpdd] Rainbow Bridge: Primrose Sends Me a Gift from Beyond

pat schuett bunzella at yahoo.ca
Thu Jul 13 14:29:23 EDT 2017


About six weeks ago, my precious baby Primrose decided she had had enough of the fight with uterine cancer and left me for the Rainbow Bridge.  She was enjoying life, eating and bustling around like a normal pig, and then suddenly she wasn't anymore.  Once we got her "hospice" regimen down, she had a really good three months or so from the first diagnosis.  She had always been a "hands-off" pig, but in that time, we both got to really enjoy the daily syringe-feeding sessions when she would snuggle in my arms, sucking down the pureed carrot and Critical Care mixture and chirping to me little comments about how her day was going.
With her departure,  I was down two piggies from capacity (my piggy room will hold six comfortably) and my local Humane Society shelter had not had any piggies for months.  The shelter is also responsible for cremating pets and the very day they called me to let me know Primrose's little urn was ready for pick-up, two piggies magically appeared on their adoptable animals listings.  I felt as if this had to be a message from Primrose that she wanted me to get on with life and make some new piggies happy!
They were listed as a bonded pair of sows, but as soon as the shelter person brought me into their room and I peeked into their cage (they were hiding in a pigloo together so I couldn't even see them yet), I thought to myself "If that's sow poop, these are the two biggest sows I've ever met".  A quick examination confirmed my suspicions --- they are both boys.  (Not the first time this shelter has made a gender mistake with piggies; they seem to just take the word of whoever brings the piggies in, but I'm surprised they were not more careful with a pair.) 
The boys have an interesting backstory.  If you can believe it, a family had left them with one of their kids' school friends while they went away for the Easter holidays back in April and THEY NEVER CAME BACK. When the petsitting family tried to get in touch, it turned out that their cell phone numbers had been changed and their house was up for sale, so it does look premeditated and part of a bigger story.  The petsitters decided after a month that they didn't want to keep the piggies and brought them to the shelter.
Butch and Sundance have settled right in and have been very entertaining additions to the herd. Like most of the piggies I have adopted, they seem to have not seen other piggies since they were babies and are big fans of my cage-cleaning tradition of letting piggies out to visit the other cages in turns while their own is being cleaned.  I would guess they are either brothers or have been together a long time; they do have little disagreements but usually sleep together in the same hay tray or pigloo.  Oddly enough, the disagreements are usually over relations with the other boars, while they will happily stand shoulder to shoulder trying to get the attention of Faith or Bonnie (the sows).
Primrose was one of those tiny but mighty piggies with a pigsonality much bigger than her diminutive physical self.  I still think of her every day, but not as sadly as I would have without her little parting gift of Butch and Sundance!  
Pat and the Prairie Pigs  (Faith, Guinness, Bonnie, Edvard Munch, Butch and Sundance)



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