Animal Tales

LITTLE JAZZ

In a hot summer, Jazz and his brother were brought to their neighborhood by a man who was friends with their neighbor. He was raising them to be butchered & keeping them there temporarily until he found a more permanent place for them. After about a week, Clark and John couldn’t help but notice that they were screaming constantly. We went to see them and find out what was going on and saw two scrawny little piglets. They immediately went back to their house to gather up some food for them, thinking they may be hungry.

Well, needless to say they gobbled up everything they brought them. They had no water, just old bagels and stale bread in their pen, nothing more. For the next few days, they fed and watered them. They even cooked fresh veggies and gave them fresh fruits every day. The man who owned them found out that they were feeding them and he was angry that they did that. He insisted they be kept on the diet he had them on…. old stale rolls, bagels and rotten unidentifiable “stuff.”

After a few weeks, they were still sneaking over to continue to feed them as much as possible, the poor little babies were starving!! They decided to take it upon theirselves to call the vet and have him take a look at the pigs, but one of them ended up dying anyway.

Another week or so went by, and they were still sneaking food over to “Jazz”. Clark confronted the owner again and again to take care of this little pig or they would take him away and call authorities. The owner was reluctant to let them take the pig, he wanted to eat him the way he was!!!….. only about 2 months old !! Well…..they took him !

They provided the best possible home they could by converting one of our sheds into a pen. He had a pretty big indoor area and a fenced in outdoor area. Jazz kept going through the fencing and escaping into neighbors’ yards, of course, when they were at work.

Unfortunately, animal control got involved several times. They warned them that if they didn’t contain him they would have been taken to court, fined, and they would have taken the pig to be put down — or shall he say eaten! They put up an electric wire fence to contain him into a smaller yard. He was not happy and neither were them.

Before they knew it, they had many strange people knocking on their door to take the pig. Apparently animal control put out the word that they needed to find Jazz another home. These strange people all wanted to “take him off their hands”. They found out that every person that came to them had plans on either a pig roast, or butchering him themselves.

One guy told them that he would do them a “favor” and butcher him in their yard and share the meat! He said that it would be easy to kill him because the pig comes right up to people, without fear or aggressiveness. He wanted to shoot him in the head, hang him on their daughter’s swing set and slice him up before she got home from school.

Despite all this they were able to keep him for just over a year and it got to the point where it was clear he would be safer at farm sanctuary.