Bucky the pig (Provided photo — Amy Cheney-Seymour)

I was 8 years old, chin deep in a pork chop, contemplating life, or at least, food.

“Where do pork chops come from?” I asked my sis.

“Pigs,” said Lori.

“How do the farmers know the pig died?”

My farm-raised father put down his fork; this was table speak for lecture-on-the-way.

“What do you mean, know when a pig has died?” he said.

I dipped my porkchop in my applesauce, pausing, “I mean, do they just find them on the ground and then bring them to the butcher?”

“No” he said, shaking his head, that I had not yet made the kill-pig-pork-chop connection. He explained to my wide, tear-filled eyes what happened after the little piggy got to the market.

President of the Clean Your Plate Club, what you didn’t finish at dinner my Dad saved for your breakfast. The next morning it was oatmeal as usual, and thus began my slow journey as a vegetarian.

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A pig of my own

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Years later we had a pet pig. Chestnut on the ends with a white belt, he arrived on dainty cloven hooves, his expressive brown eyes promising mischief. The Harry Potter fans at the summer equine camp we managed christened him Buckbeak. Saved from the breakfast plate, our playful wee shoat, wooed the campers with his Steve Tyler vocalizations, and flaxen eyelashes.

Curious, charming and initially lap-sized, Bucky developed an appetite for camp cuisine in the form of vinegar-soaked french fries and Froot Loops. Each evening Buckbeak was serenaded, wrapped in a saddle pad sling, to a mashup of Justin Bieber’s song “Baby.” Long after lights out, a chorus of “Bucky, Bucky, Bucky OH,” floated from the barn bunkhouse past the fireflies into the ether.

Bucky stood nose to snout with our pug Esther. Dogs and pigs are natural enemies, but as I’d told countless annoyed restaurant managers, Esther was not a dog, she was a pug. In the case of Pug and Pig, it was love at first snort. Lured to Esther’s similar corkscrew tail, Bucky won her heart with a mantra of sleep ’til you’re hungry, eat ’til you’re tired.

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Freedom

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Bucky grew bored of his coddled life and longed for exploration, and had an urge to upgrade the landscaping.

Bucky’s first foray into the wild was attained by flipping open the latch mounted inside his dutch door. When we moved the latch outside his gate, Bucky, feeling his Fruit Loops, put down his sizable skull like a free agent linebacker and went through the gate. This act led to a stronger gate and two locks.

Bucky’s escapades were often during a deluge, which brought worms and mud — both a delight from his POV. Wherever his adventures led, Bucky was easy to spot, leaving a trail of destruction as he bulldozed furrows in flower beds or uprooted saplings with a flick of his powerful, shovel snout. He also never stopped making noise. His porcine declarations of happy, sad, yummy and moose in the driveway put an end to several unsupervised adventures.

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One direction

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Bucky grew like gossip, so did his larger, now electrified pen. By August, Bucky was two pugs tall, 300 pounds and sporting freshly hatched tusks. For one Starlight mint Bucky would come, sit, catch, roll over (both ways), fetch and bark on command.

Sadly for my cell phone, “Drop it” was not in his repertoire.

“What will you do with Bucky in September?” I asked the director as the campers rubbed his bulbous belly.

“Me? Nothing. I told What’s-His-Name down the road he could slaughter him,” she said.

I already had a bite-your-bleeding-lip relationship with the camp directors. Bucky’s longevity was not her concern and true to her word, as summer fields sighed shades of olive green and mustard, locals heard of a pig “needing killin’.” Offers to render Bucky into bacon arrived en masse, a mansplaining militia, with rifles ready to “take him off our hands.” It was then I decided he was mine to save.

Explanations of a quick death in exchange for pickled feet head cheese fell on deaf ears. I have no beef if you love bacon, so long as that bacon isn’t Bucky.

“He won’t feel a thing, honey,” said What’s-His-Name.

I smiled.

What’s-His-Name smiled.

My husband, savvy about my smiles, suddenly remembered an errand.

“You use a sledge hammer?” I asked.

“Yup. X marks the spot” he said and pointed to Bucky’s forehead.

“So I understand you smack him between the eyes with a sledge and he won’t feel a thing?”

“Yup.”

“What if he turns his head and you partially crush his skull, will he feel that?” I asked.

“Um, well that doesn’t happen much.”

“Much?” I said.

What’s-His-Name drove away in a cloud of dust.

The campers departed the Adirondacks and Bucky with selfies and tears; that same night, checking over my shoulder for What’s-His-Name, we relocated Bucky to our home.

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Home at last

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Fletcher Farm road is the home of Olympic gold and silver medalist Billy Demong. Not to be outdone, Bucky gained fame of a different mettle.

To us, Bucky was our pleasantly plump little piggy and still Esther’s bestie, but to others he was 400 pounds of get-off-my-property. They had a point: Bucky was astonishingly agile and single-minded about his Eat, Sleep and Destroy mission.

Bucky’s favorite neighborhood games were Garage Hide and Seek, Free Tree Removal, and Musical Nap Time (any deck will do). The last often involved State Trooper John Moody, who called my husband one afternoon.

“Hello Kris, this is Trooper John Moody.”

“Hey John ,oh no, what’s wrong?”

“Well, I’m at Mrs. Oliver’s and she says this massive, sleeping pig on her deck is yours?”

“Ugh, sorry, I’ll be right there.”

Kris found Officer Moody and Mrs. Oliver chatting at the scene of the snack-n-sleep. Shattered flower pots and red geranium petals littered Mrs. Oliver’s deck. Belly southside, slightly snoring, Bucky was deep in porcine dreamland.

“So, how should we move him?” asked Officer Moody.

“You two stand over there,” Kris said.

“Ok,” said Trooper Moody, “those tusks are something.”

“He’s harmless,” Kris said.

Officer Moody had heard that line before.

Kris shook the potato chip bag once.

The snoring stopped.

Kris shook the bag again.

Bucky grunted.

The third shake-o-chips and Bucky popped-tall and ready.

Buckbeak was officially coaxed back to his pig clink Hansel and Gretel style.

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Future cast 2.0

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Buckbeak was a psychic meteorologist. If Bucky started rearranging his stall, cancel your plans and stoke the fire.

Future cast 2.0 began when Buckybeak removed the two bales of hay from his stall, snout-fluffed his pile of shavings, and then painstakingly remade his bed. The rest of the day he carried his storm stick, an auspicious twelve-foot tamarack limb. That night would snow. Or the temperature dropped, sometimes both.

When nights were colder than a witches-you-know-what, our alarm went off for midnight mash feedings. My husband and I took turns, which meant I was on duty every fourth night. Heavy lidded and reluctant, I slipped from our warm cocoon into winter layers.

Bucky’s chunky apple mash steamed on our woodstove; he was waiting, into the night I went.

A few breaths outside our back door and I had frosted eyelashes and frozen nostrils. I trudged 137 steps in the brass monkey cold to Bucky’s pen. Bucky was a HSP: Highly Sensitive Pig; his floppy, batlike ears already heard the back door close. He was ready and waiting calling out in whispered oinks. Even massive, muscled pigs keep it quiet at night. I watched him devoured steaming molasses and apple mash with much deeply gratified humming.

Trough clean, Bucky stomped in anticipation of dessert: one starlight mint. Fingers stiff and tingling, I unwrapped a candy for the world’s kindest and cleverest pig. Able to crush a whole cantaloupe in a single chomp, Bucky took the candy with gentle, puckered lips crunched contentedly. I patted Bucky’s coarse forehead hair, formerly known as X Marks The Spot.

A few years later we felt the call of the wild west and accepted jobs in Park City, Utah. The problem: Bucky. The bigger problem: Bucky weighed in at 800 lbs, and the tusks were now curved, long and sharp. Esther and Bucky romanced from the other side of the electric fence, and our kids no longer had Bucky Rodeos. Bucky didn’t understand the gradual lack of belly rubs and ear scratches from our kids. Bucky’s needs had changed.

Neighborly offers to slaughter Bucky trickled in. As we packed up, we struggled to find a new Bucky bungalow. It was a hard sell.

“Would you like to adopt my giant pig, with razors jutting from his maw, who identifies as a cocker spaniel?”

Salvation arrived in an early morning call from a rescue in Peru, New York, looking for a companion pig. That very afternoon I said goodbye to 800lb Bucky, wiping tears and avoiding tusks, and promised to visit.

Bucky is now in eternally muddy pastures, lined with ever-blooming geranium. On frigid nights I often wake, and roll over remembering how loyalty to a once wee piggy made me friends with the night.

Leaving Bucky in care of strangers clings to me like a guilty lint. In my barn coat I carry starlight mints and a remote sense of failure in the form of a pig shaped shadow that I couldn’t be a witness to his entire life.