final assignment of the year 2006

for my short story class, i was asked to re-write the story of the Three Little Pigs with a particular genre in mind. i started out wanting to write a Gothic short story where three sisters were the 'pigs' and the family butler was the 'wolf' who was in love with sister #3, hiding in the house with them from some rumoured predator (also the butler). it would have been stalkeriffically creepy, but it was too hard to write in 2 hours (because i procrastinated). so i was struck by a new idea as the Office was running through my mind: a documentary.

here it is, in all its unedited glory because i don't edit.

House Pigs: Habits and Habitations

The common house pig (sus domesticus), unlike its wild and hedonistic brethren prefer to settle in rural areas, rather than tramp around forests foraging for food. As omnivorous scavengers, their diet varies from location to location, highly dependent upon the humans that choose to feed them. Humans, a lazy but resourceful breed, follow house pigs around, waiting for them to build lodgings before co-opting them for their own purposes. House pigs are recompensed with food and mud. House pigs are incapable of making their own mud for wallowing. As they do not roam for watering holes, they rely on humans to provide the necessary water for mud. The relationship between house pig and human is considered to be symbiotic. After many years of co-habitation, house pigs and humans can become indistinguishable in feature and habit.

Juvenile house pigs embark on a journey in their fourth year to find a new home to live, building their own when one cannot be found. Building materials vary, also dependent on the materials they can forage from human refuse. The most common are made of straw and thatch, or sticks leaned against trees and rocks. They are not the most impressive of homes, no more than hovels in the ground. There have been isolated instances of houses built of sturdier materials, like the hull of an abandoned carriage or a pile of bricks. These houses can be ornate enough for humans to live in them outright. These houses also allow for the house pigs to build hearths for warming their homes in the winter.

The house of the house pig is not only meant for protection from the elements but also from the house pig’s natural predators. As large and slow-moving beasts, house pigs fall prey to any carnivore larger than 1 m in height. Crafty hunters will trick house pigs out of the safety of their homes by baiting the entrances with giblets or turnips. The most prominent house pig predator is the windy wolf (Canis lupus ventosus), a very rare breed of wolves with expanded lung capacities and the ability to exhale with gale-force winds – 8 on the Beaufort scale (63-74 km/hr), enough to cause light structural damage. Lazy pigs fall easy prey to this elusive predator. Their homes – far from sturdy – are blown away with ease by the windy wolf. Of course, Newton’s third law forces the wolf back several kilometers from the recoil of its own breath, giving the house pig time to escape if it is not grievously injured.

In 1435 there was a recorded instance of a stubborn windy wolf making siege on a house pig holed up in a brick dome. Each attempt to blow down the house sent the wolf back three kilometers, allowing the crafty house pig to forage and relieve itself at half hour intervals. Observers at the time theorized that the house pig had actually stolen a kite from the windy wolf, for they saw a red one flying from the smoke vent of the brick dome, taking advantage of another futile attempt. They noted that the wolf seemed particularly irate after that. When it finally returned from the recoil trip, it clambered up the dome and into the smoke vent. The wolf was not seen again. The house pig was arrested by environmental officials upon hearing the reports of the observers for the murder of an endangered species. He was later released and absolved when the judge ruled that the pig was provoked.