Little Piggies

I have been helping out during Story Hour at the library on Tuesday mornings. "Pam," the head librarian, has 23 children between the ages of three to five and brought me in to be the enforcer. I'm the one who rounds up the kids who get bored or distracted and herd them back to listening circle.

Before Story Hour officially starts the kids play with toys that belong to the library. This keeps the children already there occupied as the rest of them trickle in. It also is a way to distract them while their mothers leave the room. Last Tuesday Pam and I notice one little boy, "Travis," carrying one of the metal toy trucks. He had wrapped one of the cords from the bucket of wooden stringing beads around the front wheels and was holding the cord out in front of him with the truck dangling from it. When he noticed us watching him he said, "This is a dead truck."

I laughed because that was not what I expected him to say but Pam laughed louder and then told me the following story. Travis's mom is the town's Vet and last week Pam called her out to her farm to look at one of her pigs. The pig was having trouble delivering a litter of piglets. The Vet came as soon as she could and brought Travis with her. Pam's husband was the one handling the pig problem and since Pam was doing other chores she did not get to the farrowing house until sometime later. When she opened the door to the building the first thing she saw was Travis walking around with a dead baby pig tucked under each arm happy as a...well, a little boy who likes to carry dead baby pigs around.