Bea and the Biters

I'm laughing as I type out the title.  I just said to a friend "Did you read the last story about Bea and the biters"?  And then had to explain that the last one wasn't actually called that, but that I now had a good title for today's story.  :)

So, "Bea and the Biters" it is..... A punk rock band in the making.

All has settled down on the biting front, at least as far as the nipping was preventing the babies from getting fed.  

The little trouble-maker even lost his cat-collar so it's harder to distinguish which one he is in the mass of black piglet bodies clustered together.  (He's the tiny, high-strung one who is still in the middle of every conflict.)

The babies are growing, and thriving, and still biting.  But now they are biting each other.  There are tiny wounds on the faces and eyelids of a few of them.  

They no longer seem to be biting their mother, which is a relief to Big Bea and also to me.  

Maybe the distress of having their breakfast get up and walk away from them too many times finally taught them a lesson.  

Now that they are finally nursing in relative peace (Problem Child has conceded that his spigot is, actually, the one on the bottom.....), I could get a good look at the areas under their curly tails when they were eagerly slurping down dinner the other day.  

I started counting males, and thought I must be mistaken.  

So I counted girls.  There is one.

Out of 8 contentious piglets, 7 are male.  No wonder!!!  

No wonder they are sparring and biting.

No wonder they can't sleep comfortably without one pulling himself from the bottom of the pile and launching himself to the top.

No wonder there is a fist-fight (figuratively speaking) every time they are awake.

No wonder one has a puffy eyelid, one has a blood spot on his nose, one has a healing bite on his ear.....  

No wonder they stray from the nest in a bold piglet-style swagger, making little snorty noises as they explore or just trot up to annoy their mother.

No wonder one is so brazen as to walk up to his sleeping mother and nip her on the edge of her sensitive nose, just to get a reaction....  (No wonder Bea chooses to sleep AWAY from the nest of babies!)

No wonder one little calm piglet nurses under Bea's front leg....that's the girl, and she must just want to have some peace and quiet.

Bea has a rabble-rousing, looking-for-a-fight crew of males, and it won't settle down anytime soon. 

 

My friend said that they should all sport mohawks.  Funny thing is....Bea herself carries an American Guinea Hog gene that causes her bristles to stand up in a mohawk.  It traces back to just one out of 11 hogs who were gathered from across the nation into the group of "founder" hogs (which essentially preserved the American Guinea Hog genetics as a separate homestead-style hog breed).

It would be quite amusing if 7 little piglets were running around, squealing, romping, biting....and all of them wore mohawk-style bristles.  I could color their top-line bristles in punk-rock shades and issue bad-boy shades and guitars and bling and leather jackets to fit the individual personality of each young barrow.....

I'll need to glue a pretty pink bow on the head of the little girl....  

She can be the sweetness to balance out the brazen male-ness of the siblings.

Unless she takes after her brothers and fits right in.  

Or maybe....she'll get exasperated with their incessant aggressive fighting and knock some sense into all of them!

I can see it now.  Neon-mohawk decorated piglets with heads hung low, trotting meekly after a surprisingly bold sister who commands them all.

Miss Bea would be proud of her little rule-enforcer, if that scenario plays out.  And then maybe Mama could get some rest while Sissy keeps the boys in line.

 

Laura