“When you’ve written to your president, to your congressman, to your senator and nothing, nothing has come of it, you take to the streets.” Erica Bouza

“He don’t take shoving.”  Jerry Parsons

“I resist, therefore I am.”  James W. Douglass

“Don’t let them tame you!”  Isadora Duncan

As you may remember, once long ago the three little pigs were sent off on their own to build their own homes and to find their own way in the world.

So shortly after the coup in Washington D.C., my husband and I were watching TV late one afternoon.  When from the corner of my eye I saw a movement and I thought it was a big dog wandering into the garden of our four-plex apartment.  Then I took another look and the dog was actually a large pig.  I guessed it weighed nearly 200lbs.  Now how in the world did a pig find our apartment building in essentially downtown Kingston?  Ok, it is a small town.

But then I looked out our front window again and a second pig followed the first pig into our garden, and then a third pig traipsed in after the other two. My God, the three little pigs are no longer little! 

Now, you have to realize that one of our upstairs neighbors is dedicated to feeding wildlife – raccoons, opossums, birds, cats, or whatever wanders into the yard.  So there is an abundance of corn cobs, bread pieces, seeds, celery, and I don’t know what all was laying around in the garden.  Well, the pigs immediately discovered their gourmet meal and dove in!

As I mentioned, we live in an urban area where people walk up and down the sidewalks and cars drive up and down the hill.  While the three pigs were indulging, a family with a couple of young girls came walking down the hill and were shocked to see the pigs.  The girls ran into the garden to pet the pigs, but the pigs while friendly had no interest in being petted especially since the girls interrupted the pigs’ meal.  So the girls were chasing the pigs around the garden while the parents took pictures of the situation. 

Then, with this commotion cars driving up the hill stopped to take pictures of the pigs and the young girls.  The pigs developed quite an audience.  Eventually, two trucks pulled up with the owners of the pigs. The owners of the pigs thought they could quietly convince the pigs to climb into a big plastic garbage can so the owners could lift the pigs, one at a time, into their truck to take them home.  However, the pigs decided they liked their freedom, and the gourmet meal provided for them so they definitely had NO intention of being carried off.  The owners cried, “Here piggy, piggy” motioning toward the garbage can.  Heck, the owners even tried to entice the pigs into the carrier with slices of bread, but the pigs were too smart for them.

After hours of the pigs roaming around our gardens while avoiding their owners, one of the pigs made a mistake! 

Picture our building’s side, with a fenced off area at the back-end of the building connecting to the fence that separates our property from the development next to us, in a “U” shape.  The pigs’ owners cheered as they had a big piece of plywood that they used to block off the open end of the “U”.  Then the owners ventured into the new pen to capture a pig. The battle started! The noise was horrific with the squeals from the pigs, as the pigs tried to fight off being captured in the garbage can.  There were garden tools on the side of the apartment along with hoses so the pigs used the tools to fight off their owners.  We heard “EXPLOSIONS, CRASHES, SHREEKS, SQUEALS” that sounded like a full-scale war, similar to the sounds that happened at the Coup of the White House. 

Since we didn’t have a window on that side of the apartment we couldn’t tell who was winning, but eventually, the owners struggled to carry a vibrating, shrieking garbage can to the truck and put the pig in the back of the truck.  One by one the pigs were trapped despite their fight to avoid capture and arrest, and they were thrown into the truck.  One of the owners was kind enough to try to straighten the remnants of our gardening tools that had been tossed around – like the remnants of a battle.  Then the owners jumped in their trucks and took off with The Three Little Pigs.  I wonder if the pigs are STILL battling and if they escape again whether they will return for a visit?