Perhaps it is inevitable that from a litter of eight piglets one would be a runt.

When I first saw the piglets on Saturday I thought one was marginally smaller than the rest and by Sunday afternoon the difference was more pronounced.

Here's how history repeats itself.   When Chocolat was little we lived on a plot with a nursery in Midrand.   One particularly frosty June morning one of my salesmen stepped into the office after having been away to their family farm in Haenertsburg for the weekend.    Noticing a bulge under his jacket I opened my mouth to protest but he raised one hand in defence and with the other he drew out a little pink bundle of indignation.   I did not expect it to be a pig, no.

He had picked it up for dead, caked in icy mud.   He had washed it a few times, apparently, and fed it every hour the whole weekend long.   The piglet was snowy white with pink skin shining through.   And angry at life wow!   I wasn't having this.   Folding my arms I demanded to know who was going to look after the pig while he was outside in the cold working.   You had to know this youngster.   He put on his most imploring face and stepped closer, opening his jacket so that I could peek at the silenced tyke.   As long as that pig was tucked into a jacket against someone's chest, facing into the arm which you had to bring in close, he was silent.   And silence is what you wanted once you heard what he was capable of.

                "I'm not keeping him inside my jacket the whole day long" I said.  



So I unzipped my jacket, clutched him to my chest and worked the computer keys with my right hand for most of the next two weeks.

Chocolat was home sick that day so I made a number of excursions to the house to check on her, and around lunchtime trying to coax her to eat something, she said all she wanted was the pig.   Desperate for her to feel better I fetched the pig and tucked it in with her.   She cradled him in her left arm and he lay on his side, just the head sticking out next to hers on the pillow.   They slept for hours and when they awoke her fever was broken and he was tame.   Who'd have thought?

The pig grew strong and lively.   Did I mention naughty?   When my lunchtime salad was brought to me from the house you could hear his squeals of delight from a mile away.   He would bound into the office as if that whole dish had been set up just for him.   We taught him not to squeal inside the office, and not to jump and work himself into a frenzy over the food.   He had to sit, which he did, flat on his funny little flat bum, hind legs sticking out in a perfect V and front legs locked straight into position between the hind legs on the floor.   His head would be tilted in a straight line up to the table, which must have looked like Table Mountain to him.   It was a perfect Pilates stance.   From there he would give little grunts every now and then just in case you forgot about him.

I was always fearful that my dogs would someday get him.   I had a formidable Dobermann and an equally formidable Weimeraner with an unusually deep wide chest and heavy build.   They often lay at the gate to the house, observing jealously his antics on our side of the fence.   One day someone left the gate ajar and too late I saw piglet strutting towards the Dobermann with stiff little legs.   The dogs knew not to come through the gate even if it was open but piglet didn't know he wasn't allowed inside the yard.   That was their turf.   The Dobermann lay with acute attention, like a Trafalgar Square lion, just waiting for piglet to cross the line, which he did before I could get there.   She was jet black and beautiful, in the prime of her life and she had been jealous of piglet for a long time.   The Weimeraner lay about a meter further, also on high alert watching the scene unfold.   Sensing her threatening vibe Pig jumped the last few inches on stiff legs and nipped the Dobermann on the nose.   The dog was totally caught off guard.   She scrambled backwards and sideways at the same time, stumbling over the Weimeraner who was equally anxious to get away from the pint-sized threat, and that was that.   A truce was reached and they all became friends.

That was thirty years ago.   We now live in a different place.   My daughter Chocolat has a daughter.   Three, in fact.   The pig is black, not white.   But the love is the same...   History repeats itself.