“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
- Winston Churchill
Those of us who have the opportunity to work with animals often are sometimes faced with individuals who challenge our own understanding of animal cognition. For me, Hanai was one of those animals. The massive, joyful, mischievous pink pig shocked and stunned me, as have so many animals before her, and her obvious deep intelligence was unsettling in its implications. Though it is common scientific knowledge that pigs are by far some of the most intelligent and emotionally complex domestic animals, experiencing their incredible and unique behavior in person can be humbling.
Compared to the millions of pigs in the United States and across the world, Hanai was incredibly lucky. She was born to a mother restrained in a farrowing crate, unable to turn around or exhibit any natural behaviors; her and her siblings were born to raised for meat production, as most pigs are. Her brothers were castrated without anesthetic, and her siblings had their tails docked, teeth clipped and ears notched. But this particular piglet was picked out by a soft-spoken, kind and compassionate vegetarian boy named Miko, who joined the Future Farmers of America high school program with the intent to save an animal rather than auction one to slaughter.
Miko and Hanai had an instant connection. He taught her to respond to her name when called, roll over for belly rubs, and follow him everywhere he went. A tale straight out of Charlotte’s Web, the bond the two had was undeniable. Hanai lived at Miko’s school, so his plan was to find her placement with a sanctuary by the end of summer rather than auctioning her. His family started to get nervous when they had reached out to nearly every sanctuary in Southern California only to find that they were all at capacity for pigs- because of their large size, long lifespan and high intelligence that requires loads of enrichment, pigs are very taxing on sanctuaries with limited resources, space and funding.
Gina, the founder of New Life Animal Sanctuary in Lake Elsinore and incredible lifelong advocate to animals, reached out to me asking if I had any placement ideas. Knowing how to say no is crucial to a sanctuary’s success, but we both were exceptionally touched by Hanai and Miko’s story and couldn’t bear the thought of this kind boy losing his friend in a tragic way.
I reached out to a few contacts, and tried my luck with Odd Man Inn sanctuary all the way up in Washington. Run by dedicated couple Josh and Wendy, Odd Man Inn serves as a small wildlife rehabilitation facility and safe haven for farmed animals rescued from lifetimes of abuse or neglect. To our surprise, Odd Man Inn happily agreed to take Hanai under the condition that we paid for her spay and contributed funding to her long-haul transport 15+ hours across three states. Hanai’s deadline was up to find placement or be auctioned, so we put our faith in a good outcome and allowed her to come to New Life Animal Sanctuary for temporary boarding.
I immediately launched a fundraiser on Instagram and hoped for the best; her story clearly resonated with people, because a couple of days later we had reached just under $1,000 in funding. $600 would cover her spay, $100 would cover a local vet coming out to certify Hanai as healthy for cross-state transport (this is legally necessary for animals deemed “livestock”), and the remainder would be gas money for Josh to make the long trek down from Washington only to turn and burn with Hanai to get her to safety. I had to argue with the Washington state livestock vet on the phone, who demanded that Hanai have metal tags punched into her ears to meet Washington’s individual animal identification requirements; we finally agreed, though I could feel her eye rolls through the phone, that Hanai’s microchip served as adequate identification.
When the fundraiser hit its goal, Josh got on the road and arrived two days later, on my birthday- I drove out to Lake Elsinore early in the morning to meet Gina, Miko and his parents, and of course, Hanai as we waited for Josh to arrive.
Hanai is a pig who doesn’t have a fearful bone in her body- she’s never had a reason to. She’s confident, goofy, playful and curious, and runs enthusiastically to greet every new human she sees. When I visited Hanai for the first time, she untied my shoes, pushed her favorite soccer ball to me using her snout, and crushed a plastic kiddie pool after excitedly attempting a belly flop with all four hundred pounds of her massive body. Loud trucks and large animals never phased her during her time at New Life.
But when Josh’s truck and trailer entered the property, the Hanai fell very still. Her face grew hard and serious, and her constant grunting, which pigs use to continuously communicate and “check in” with their friends, fell completely silent for the first time. As the trailer came closer Hanai’s entire body began to tremble, and she glanced to Miko several times for reassurance.
Why was she unafraid of trucks but terrified of trailers? She’d only been in two trailers in her life.
Then it dawned on Miko. During Hanai’s recent time at the county fair, every single one of her friends was auctioned to slaughter. When the slaughterhouse’s trailer arrived, kids highly attached to their animals were encouraged to step away and not watch the rough handling necessary to load this large group of pigs. Workers used electric prods, slapped pigs on the back, and used boards to roughly shove them towards the truck. Pigs are incredibly vocal when they experience discomfort, and their fearful squeals alarm other pigs nearby. Pigs also have an incredibly powerful sense of smell, so while we can’t project anything on Hanai or assume she understood things she might not have, it is very much possible that the trailer which came from being stored at a slaughterhouse bore smells that were unsettling to her survival instincts.
So when Hanai spotted this trailer entering the sanctuary property, she associated that object with a frightening experience she had and anticipated that a similar situation might be about to unfold. Despite her fear she trusted Miko, and inched forward, trembling, when he led her to the trailer using fresh watermelon. We surrounded Hanai with push board panels, never pressuring her, but guiding her gently towards the trailer as she nervously followed her boy. When she stepped up we gave her a final push, to which she gave a single squeal before the trailer was closed. It was a tearful experience as Miko comforted Hanai, kissing her snout and rubbing her ears one last time before the trailer pulled away for the long journey ahead.
When Hanai arrived at Odd Man Inn’s beautiful forested property near the Columbia River Gorge, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. She had grown up in a concrete pen at a high school, and her brief time at New Life was spent in a makeshift holding area not intended to house animals for life. Hanai knew how to be a pet, but she didn’t know how to be a pig. A California girl at heart, she wasn’t used to the cold and was invited, as ridiculous as some may find it, to sleep in the house snuggled up by a space heater with blankets as she settled in.
Hanai was spoiled and showered with love and affection during her time of transition away from her beloved Miko, fed vegan cheesecake off a fork, given belly rubs on the daily, and treated as a cherished family member by Josh and Wendy. She soon discovered the basic joys of life for all pigs lucky enough to have access to them, wallowing in a nice mud pit, rooting up earth and soil in search of tasty morsels, and exploring the ancient forest just as her wild ancestors once did before the invention of concentrated animal feeding operations (or “factory farms”).
She had the shock of her life when she saw the first snowfall of winter, and that initial fresh powder was a symbol of Hanai’s rare luck as a meat breed pig: to experience the changing seasons is a pleasure denied to most.
Hanai’s life as a pig truly began when she met Lucy. Anyone with a smidge of animal experience would have guessed that Lucy and Hanai should have been mortal enemies. Lucy was a small fourteen year old potbelly pig with not a friend in the world. Her lack of youthful energy and awkward, antisocial tendencies made her fall towards the bottom of hierarchy at the sanctuary. Hanai was the class clown, mischievous, wild, bold, curious and clumsy: basically, an elderly pig’s worst nightmare. Rapidly approaching six hundred pounds, she was nearly the size of a female polar bear. But sometimes animals deny our expectations and challenge our assumptions. For a reason unbeknownst to Josh and Wendy, in some unspoken porcine language, Hanai formed a deep, intimate connection with Lucy. The two would snuggle side by side through the winter, some part of their bodies always remaining in contact for comfort and warmth. Hanai was a freight train in both size and personality, but she knew to be gentle and sensitive in her interactions with Lucy. There was no biological benefit to the kinship these two had struck up, and Lucy certainly didn’t make an exciting playmate for a young and wild teenager like Hanai.
But nonetheless, they were friends. And sweet, curious, sensitive, gentle and goofy Hanai taught me, once again, how much more complex non-human animals are than most people believe them to be. Animals are waiting to teach us, to open doors of empathy and understanding. All we have to do is keep an open mind, observe, and listen.
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