Yesterday my brother was helping my parents clean out their basement, and he found a handwritten essay that my mom wrote in the second or third grade, describing her experience on the farm taking care of a pet. You might have to know my mom to fully appreciate the (unintended) humor, but needless to say, it pretty neatly explains my mother’s attitude about pets and their role in the family. As they say, you can take the girl out of the farm, but you take the farm out of the girl.

My Pet Pig

Last spring my Daddy gave me a black and white baby pig to take care of. It was one of ten pigs. It was the smallest of them all. My Daddy told me to feed it with a baby bottle. So I went to the Drug Store and got a baby bottle. The clerk asked, “Is this the kind your Mother uses?” She thought I was buying a bottle for a real baby. But I didn’t tell her I was buying it for a pig. So I took the bottle home and warmed some milk and fed the little pig about every hour. I did this for a day and a half and after all that trouble my little pig grew weaker and died. So that was the end of my pet pig.

By Carolyn Margaret Cain