The Groovy Pig

The pig was groovy. Excellent. He was born with big, long rabbit ears.

All the other pigs on the farm were typical, with regular ears. But they had to keep hearing bees buzzing. Up from the ground. The farmer was raising them. They pollinated his hops.

The groovy pig, the only one with rabbit ears, hung around the wild rabbits on the farm. The other pigs thought he was weird. His ears were so long, they flopped all the way down to the ground. The rabbits had no problem with him, though. They munched on the farmer’s hops with the groovy pig, not even noticing him.

He was pretty lonely, though, being harassed by the pigs and ignored by the rabbits. But at least he had plenty of hops to eat. The rabbits gently taught him how to like it.

One day, he heard a loud, buzzing noise in the hops garden. Curious, he followed the sound, which he found to be made of a swarm of wasps, to the farmer’s beer vat, a bunch of genie bottles full of beer strewn out on the floor of a hay barn. Most of the bottles were smashed open. Beer was all over the hay.

Gleefully, the pig dove right into the beer puddles, lapping up his share of the delightful concoction. The bees, too, were buzzing around the beer, swarming all over the biggest puddles.

The farmer walked in. He yelled at the bees. “Shoo!” He waved his arms at them. The pig, startled, looked up at the farmer’s eyes. The farmer was amazed at the sight. Right there before him was a cute little runt with huge ears hanging all the way down to the ground all around the pig’s body. The farmer cheerfully greeted the pig with open arms. “Hey, bunny pig!” The pig, however, demonstrated a severe fear of rejection. Right away, the pig ran out of the barn escaping from the farmer’s grips.

Astonished, the pig discovered a reaper sowing a crop. Running up to the reaper, the pig got caught under the moving blades. Tearing away from the blades, the pig lost his ears. Blood oozed from his wounds. He fell unconscious on the side of the crop. Cars zoomed past him on the road adjacent to the crop. In a dream, it seemed to him, he heard a car pull over to the side of the road just in front of where he lay. He heard the car’s door slam shut as someone’s brisk foot steps seemed to clip-clop in high heels closer to him.

The pig heard the voice of a concerned sweet woman. “Oh, my goodness! What have we here?” The woman seemed to the pig to be right there in front of his face as his eyes were shut. “You poor little thing! Are you all right?” He tried to open his eyes but fell dead asleep again.

When he woke up, he was sitting at a long oval desk in a huge, exquisitely decorated office, apparently to him of the filthy rich, wearing an expensive finely tailored suit and heavy gold rings. Oddly to him, his ears were still missing, and he felt as though something more serious had transfixed him: strangely, he could not remember his name. Confused, he gazed through the office’s glass-pane window, surprised to see only a busy city in the dark of the night.

Planning on never going back to the farm, the pig began strategizing how he was going to hide his identity. Deciding upon hiding his injured wounds, he started looking for a wig. He could not, however, find one. Every time he asked another store owner in the city for a wig, they told him to get on the phone and always to his no avail. The bookstores had no answers for him, either. The hooks led him down unanswered roads, too. To further the challenge of it all, all that searching was hard for the poor pig to do.

One day, once the pig had exhausted all possibilities of finding a wig, having spent all of his money on phone minutes calling every single store, he was stunned to be mesmerized by an incredible sight in one of the stores. Standing right before him was the most beautiful sheep he had ever seen. How such a distinguished sheep could be so richly multi-colored all over her body in such a bold, beautiful rainbow escaped him.

Immediately, lacking, the pig felt, anything specific to say to the sheep that could possibly match up to the sheep’s utter beauty, the amazed pig asked the splendid creature for her coat of many colors. After a long pause, the sheep timidly agreed with the pig on such an exchange.

Right away, the sheep, somewhat reserved, and the pig, overjoyed, both strolled out of the store into a nearby coffee shop together. Seated at a small, round dining room table over coffee with the pig, the sheep told the pig all about how she had escaped from a farm where she had not fit in very well with the rest of the sheep. All the other sheep, she explained to the pig, were covered in the typically white colored sheep hair. As a result, they all thought she was weird, leaving her feeling terribly lonely. On the brighter side, she went on, she had fallen in love with one of the sheep, a runt, which then began returning to her at least just as much love that she was offering him if not even more. Joyfully to the sheep, to the runt, unlike the other sheep, the female sheep’s own multi-colored coat was a delectably tasty mouthful, like a big, round, deliciously sweet rainbow sucker.

Unfortunately, however, the runt, bearing forth no offspring with the sheep, became addicted to one of the multi-colored sheep’s teats. Keeping his lips pursed on the sheep’s left teat practically all of the time made the teat shrink in size over time. Eventually, the teat was not even there anymore.

Still in the coffee shop, as the pig and sheep continued chatting together, the pig did not tell the sheep about any of his own problems on his own farm. Curious, the sheep asked the pig what such a nice pig was doing in such a hectic city. The pig replied to her that he was looking for himself, for he had somehow forgotten his name. Concerned, the sheep expressed a desire to help the pig..

“I can help you remember your name,” the sheep offered the pig gently. “All we have to do is fall in love. It’s easy to fall in love. As a matter of fact, a love potion will do the trick. I’ll go find one.” She told the pig to wait there in the coffee shop for her return as she hurried out of the shop.

After a lengthy walking period throughout the city, the sheep came upon a street side store labeled on the sidewalk just above the store’s front door, “Potions & Maybe More.” Knocking on the door, the sheep saw the door creak open. A witch flew down from the sky right behind the sheep. “Turn around!” commanded the witch. The sheep ran into the store. The door slammed shut. The whole place inside started shaking, flashing lights, and thundering. A lit up hologram of a wild boar’s face floated in through the closed door. The boar’s voice boomed. “You seek eternal life…no doubt.”

“No!” cried the sheep. “I want to be in love!”

“You have two choices,” boomed the boar. “You can select either immortality or love. The first choice is on the left. The second choice is on the right.”

The sheep turned around. She saw nothing but two doors, one on either side of a little wooden bookcase. She opened the door on the right. When she walked through the doorway, she transformed into a coat. Quickly, she flew back to the pig in the coffee shop. The pig was startled to discover the coat enveloping his body. The coat was pure white.

The witch eyed the pig through the coffee shop window. She shouted, “Lend me your ears…you…pig!” The pig turned around. Through the front window, the witch shouted to the pig to choose between immortality or love, not both, or else suffer eternal doom. Quickly, the witch flew away cackling. Hiding from the witch, the pig stretched out on the coffee shop floor pulling his newly discovered white coat over his head and fell asleep. Starting to suffocate, the pig was too unconscious to pull the wool down from his nose to breathe. Suddenly, the white coat, at that moment, for the first time, completely immobilized, did not know what was going on enough not to turn back into its true self of the sheep of many colors. Immediately, the sheep, on top of the pig, began making love to the pig. “You’re Piggy!” cried the sheep at the moment of climax. Suddenly, the pig knew all the wisdom of the universe. Then, the sheep of many colors, knowing itself again, turned back into the white coat on the pig’s shoulders.

Cautiously, the pig, afraid of suffocating again, took off the white coat. Motionless again on the floor, the white coat turned back into the sheep of many colors. The pig told the sheep that he could never wear her again. He himself, however, lamented to the sheep that he had forgotten who he was again. “You’re Piggy!” the sheep, remembering the climax, gleefully explained to the pig. The pig, suddenly relieved, felt as though he would never forget his name ever again. Thanking the sheep, the pig merrily skipped out of the coffee shop full of the most intense joy he had ever felt before in his entire life.

One day, the sheep of many colors, munching on a coffee chocolate bar, discovered in a bookstore a certain small book labeled with the book title, The Groovy Pig, along with the author name, Piggy. Fondly recognizing the name, the sheep lovingly kissed the book leaving big, wet, coffee chocolate black lip marks on one of the pages right on top of Piggy’s autograph.

“Hey!” shouted the bookstore cashier, a tall, thin, shabby, grey, old goat, to the sheep. “You can’t do that! That’s dirty! Get that out of here!” Embarrassed, the sheep quickly ran out of the bookstore with the book still under her arms.

As the sheep continued running, on the sidewalk, abruptly, the witch flew down right in front of the sheep shouting at the sheep, “Lend me your ears! You…wolf…in…sheep’s clothing!” Startled, the sheep flipped open the book on the very page that still held the sheep’s own lip impressions. Eyeing the lip marks, the witch shouted further,“I told you that you must choose between immortality or love or else suffer eternal doom!”

“I did not write this book!” cried the sheep. “In fact, I did not ever write any books at all! Besides, I am not even Piggy, anyway!”

“You have until fortnight from now to prove your truth,” commanded the witch. “If, by then, you have failed to prove yourself, you must walk through the other doorway, the pathway to immortality, for, at that point, you will be left with no other options in life from which to choose.” Quickly, the witch flew away hissing.

Frantic, the sheep was quickly fading to a ghostly white. Desperate, the sheep began embarking on a mission of reuniting with the pig. If the sheep did not succeed at getting the pig to kiss her own lip marks on that exact same spot on that same book’s same page, thereby covering up her own lip marks with the pig’s identity, the sheep would have to either get caught for having stolen the book from the bookstore or claim the book as her own, thereby having to choose immortality over love. Desperately flipping through the pages of Piggy’s book, the sheep searched for the pig’s personal information. Finding the pig’s phone number and office address listed behind the book’s back cover, the sheep, running, hopefully, if correct about the pig’s location, towards the pig’s office, stopped at a phone booth. Filling up the whole booth, the sheep tried to hold the phone receiver to call the pig to no avail. Then, the sheep somehow managed to squeeze herself back out of the booth. Looking up, the sheep eyed before her a tall skyscraper. Discovering the smallness of the lobby elevator, the sheep decided to fight the steps up to the second floor, breathing heavily the whole way. Inside the pig’s office, the sheep, still panting, somehow managed to squeeze into the pig’s desk chair.

Straight ahead of the sheep was a mirror reflecting the sheep’s portrait in the frame of a certain portrait of some sort. Perplexed, the sheep, slowly turning her head behind her, was surprised to discover the pig’s portrait on the wall behind her. With the same mirror on the facing wall, the sheep, holding that same book that she had brought with her open on the page of her lip marks and at a certain perfectly adjusted angle and position, reflected the image of the pig’s lips directly onto her own lip marks. Pulling out another coffee chocolate bar from her long, thick coat, the sheep wet the top of the bar with her moist lips. Then, with the wet tip, she traced the pig’s lip reflection onto her own lip marks. When the sheep noticed that the new lip combination was a different set of lips, the sheep, panicking, added a coffee chocolate “A” to Piggy’s name, revising, on the same page as the new lip marks, the book’s author name to “Piggy A.”

On the pig’s business card on his desk was the position, “Private I.” With tape, the sheep added the card to the page between the new name and the new set of lips. In the mirror was the title, “.A yggiP .I etairP.”

“Aging Leotard?!” she cried. “That’s me?!” Feverishly, she smeared lipstick on her face to match her lips to the shape of the page’s new seal.

On the pig’s bound notepad with his calligraphy pen, the sheep began handwriting her autobiography starting at the place where the pig had left off. She explained how the sheep on her farm had been exposed to a wolf in sheep’s clothing prowling. She, fortunately, was boring to the wolf. When the wolf had become as grey as the other sheep, she escaped after a midday feeding. The farmer did not know what was going on as the sheep were getting knocked off right and left and up and down every time he turned around.

Afraid of immortality, the sheep crammed her stuffed notepad into her briefcase. Wondering how she was going to keep anyone from reading her autobiography, she snuck out of the office with her briefcase nestled under her hair, then pitch black. On her way back to the coffee shop, the witch flew down to her right side.

“You have chosen love!” condemned the witch.

“These are not my lips!” cried the sheep.

“You must walk through the other doorway or suffer eternal doom!” commanded the witch.

The sheep ran back to the Potions & Maybe More shop, entered again, and, that time, ran through the doorway on the right, not the left. Immediately, the sheep turned into a black leather jacket. Quickly, the jacket flew all the way to the pig, lead singing in a rock band on a stage, resting on his shoulders.

All went well for days on end. Always leaving his jacket open, the pig never suffocated. Crowds roared at his concerts. The pig’s big, long ears grew back, too, soft and voluptuous. The pig loved all the attention.

One cold, rainy night, when, after another one of the pig’s concerts, back stage, in the pig’s dressing room, as the pig was changing back into his leisure wear, a gang of vicious wolves burst in. One of the wolves forcefully held out a fist full of multi-colored capsules to the pig. Another one held out really long shears. Others pinned the pig down to the floor. A final one guarded the open doorway. The wolf with shears snipped off the pig’s ears close to the base. Then the wolf with capsules stuffed all of the pills into the pig’s mouth tightly gripping the pig’s jaw firmly shut until all but one of the drugs had completely dissolved down the pig’s throat. As the pig began quickly falling unconscious, all of the wolves ran out with the pig’s ears. Still spread out on the floor, the pig started choking and then started suffocating. The last pill had gotten stuck in his throat.

The pig’s jacket, immobilized again, transformed back into the sheep. Discovering that the pig was dying, the sheep began performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the pig. Quickly, the pig woke up, coughing and sputtering up the pill. As before, at the last time when the sheep had revived the pig, the sheep and pig made love again. This time, however, the sheep immediately became fat with pregnancy.

Moaning and groaning, the sheep got up off of the pig. Quickly curling up on a cot in the room, the sheep started giving birth to her own baby…then another…and another…and still more…until ten babies had been born, all competing vigorously for the sheep’s single teat.

When the pig finally had gotten the nerve to look at what was going on over there on the cot, he was aghast at the sight of the strangest looking creatures he had ever seen. Part lamb and part piglet, the babies looked to the pig like a strange breed of what might be described as a “sheep-pig.” In a few minutes, though, the pig fell head over heels in love with the babies, thinking that they were no less than the cutest babies that he could ever imagine possible coming out of his love for anything. And that sheep! She was all his! Suddenly, the pig thought that his sheep was a knockout! He squeezed her tightly around her torso. So deeply in love with her, he felt that he always had been in love with her ever since his first meeting with her.

Lovingly watching the babies continue competing for the sheep’s single teat, the pig cautiously allowed the best offspring to get the most food. One of the pig’s very own babies, thought the pig, was certainly going to be the best sheep-pig of all. Eventually, nine runts squealed in despair devastatingly separated from their mother as they slowly crawled around on the floor around the cot looking for a teat. The one strong survivor, though, still suckling on the sheep’s then relatively oversized teat, was full-bodied, glowing in vibrant, titillating skin, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, head, body, and tail. Prouder than he had ever been, the pig beamed a visionary smile of joy at his beloved partner and then at his strong sole survivor.

A sheep-pig had been born. The very next day, the sheep and pig got married. Moaning, the witch witnessed the beauty of the product of her defeat. At that point, the sheep and the pig both had discovered a way to successfully kill the witch. Nudging their offspring into the Potions & Maybe More shop, they were all three followed close behind by the witch flying at their level. When the three family members walked into the shop, the witch, screaming, flew in right behind them. Discovering the two doors still in the room’s center, the three on foot jumped out of the way as the witch flew right through the door on the left. Immediately, the witch transformed into a small black book locked shut as her black robe turned into a key. Just as quickly, the book and key flew into the hands of the sheep-pig. Immediately opening the book, the sheep-pig was transfixed onto certain words of witchcraft somehow proclaiming in some type of strange calligraphy:

“You must choose immortality over love or else suffer eternal doom.”

Upon the guidance of his parents, the sheep-pig ran through the door on the right. Right away, the sheep-pig transformed into a blanket and pillow as the book and key flew alongside the blanket holding the sheep and pig up in the air over the blanket above the city as they all flew, to where none of them could know. Soon, the three on the blanket came upon the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Immediately, the booming voice of God informed them that they were not allowed to enter Heaven without having forgiven the witch as their plot to kill the witch in her transformation into the unforgiven book and key had left their offspring into the state of an unforgiven blanket and pillow, but their offspring had done no wrong. Crying, the pig and sheep promised God to forgive the witch asking Him how to love her. God answered that they must choose love over immortality or never enter Heaven. Immediately, the blanket and pillow flew the pig and sheep back to the city and back down to the ground.

Quickly running back into the Potions & Maybe More shop, the pig immediately desperately threw the blanket and pillow through the door on the left and, at the very same time, the sheep anxiously threw the book and key through the door on the right. Immediately, the blanket and pillow transformed back into the sheep-pig. At the same time, the book and key transformed into a ghastly wart hog. Moaning, the wart hog snorted blowing a warning for all to get out of there right away and never come back. Disgusted but relieved, the three family members ran out of the shop determined never to return. Quickly, an angel of the Lord appeared before them praising them for losing the book and key.

Vaguely next in time, the three family members mysteriously gained consciousness, somehow, to the pig, on the same farm strangely next to the same road bizarrely in the same spot where the female driver had discovered him. Suddenly, they all realized that the farmer had built them all a barn, for, as they looked up, a brand new house shaped just like a barn rose to the sky before them. Overjoyed with their good fortune, they ran into their new home. Inside, they stared in astonishment at the incredibly beautiful furnishings and remarkably intricate building design. They fell to floor laughing in utter joy discovering on the dining room table a large, heart-shaped greeting card handwritten with the words,

“Your love is your immortality, not a book.”

An expanded story of the Stephen Richards poem, The Groovy Pig, Unity School of Christianity, Unity Village, MO: June 1971.