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310 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2015
[P]igs are fractious, independent minded, and difficult to herd. Given the chance, they’ll happily turn the tables and make a meal of a person. There’s nothing humble about that…Compared to cows and sheep, pigs are arrogant bastards. “There’s always a certain tension about a bunch of pigs walking around,” a twentieth-century hog farmer said. “You never know when they’re gonna flare up – start bitin’ off another one’s ear or something. You just don’t get the calm, peaceful feeling like when you see a herd of sheep.” His statement reveals frustration but also admiration. It’s the voice of a father who loves best his worst-behaved child, who knows that docility is close kin to stupidity, who sees in his hogs a bit of himself…
Pigs eat shit. In many villages around the world today, pigs linger around peoples’ usual defecation spots awaiting a meal. Some English pigs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the same habit. In China, archaeologists discovered a terra cotta sculpture, dating to about 200 AD, showing a pig in a sty, with a round, roofed building just above it. The structure was originally identified as a grain silo for storing pig feed, but the model in fact depicted a combination pigsty-outhouse: people sat on an elevated perch and made deposits to the hungry pig below…