“And what do they do with the beast after they have killed him?” asked Louis.
“It is a piece of game,” replied Uncle Paul, “that surpasses anything else to be found in our woods. Such a boar, old hermit-boar, as we call him, may weigh as much as two hundred kilograms. That is enough for a feast, I should hope, and all the more so as the flesh is excellent. The piece of honor is the head, the famous boar’s head.
“The Asiatic wild boar, from which the domestic pig descends, does not differ from ours in its habits; it is, like ours, a ferocious, coarse, vigorous, bold, voracious animal, a formidable creature to encounter in the dark woods. How has this intractable beast become the pig that we raise? By what care, what gentle treatment, has it been made to lose its ancient savagery? To these questions there is no further [[330]]answer than in the case of the dog and the ox. After centuries and centuries of domestication, the first steps in this process of redemption from the wild state have become lost in oblivion.
“Despite all its improvement the pig still remains a coarse animal, resembling the wild boar in more than one trait. Like the latter, it feeds on anything and everything; and even more than the latter is it addicted to gluttony. The perils attending its wild state no longer existing, it devotes itself unreservedly to the gratification of its voracious appetite. The pig is a fat-factory: it lives only to eat, digest, and fatten. Its gluttony extends even to the devouring of kitchen refuse, greasy dishwater, nasty leavings, garbage; in fact everything even to excrementitious matter. Ill effects can result from its nosing about in filth to satisfy its gluttony, since it is thus liable to a horrible disease of which we will speak later. Not satisfied with acorns and other viands that go to fill its trough, it turns up the earth with its snout in quest of roots, worms, and fat larvæ. It is always either sleeping, stretched out on its side in the full enjoyment of digestion, or rooting in the ground in the hope of some chance additional tidbit, however small. In the cultivated fields, in prairies and grass-lands, devastation makes rapid progress with such a miner tearing up the ground. To check this mania for excavating, the end of the snout is pierced with two holes through each of which is passed a piece of iron wire, which is then bent into a ring.” [[331]]
“Oh, I know,” cried Jules. “I have often seen little rings of iron wire at the end of a pig’s snout. I didn’t know what they were for, but now I see. If the pig wants to dig, the iron wire is pressed against the earth and bruises the raw flesh through which it passes; and the pain forces the animal to stop.”
“Yes, that is the part played by the rings fixed in the end of the snout.”
“And we see pigs, too, with a kind of large wooden triangle around the neck,” Emile put in.
“As the pig is not very tractable and pays little heed to the drover’s voice, it is customary, when a number of these animals are taken to the fields, to put around their neck a large triangular wooden collar, which prevents their getting through hedges and overrunning the neighboring cultivated fields.
“The pig’s gluttony is proverbial. But let us beware of reproaching it for this. Its voracious appetite transmutes into savory meat and fat quantities of refuse that none of the other domestic animals would eat, and that would be wasted but for its intervention; out of otherwise worthless scraps its strong stomach, which turns at nothing, makes those delectable articles of food so much enjoyed by all of you when they appear in the form of sausages and sausage-cakes. Let us not reproach it, either, for its passionate love of mud, in which it wallows to reduce its temperature. In that it simply inherits the habits of its ancestor, the wild boar, which also delights in the luxury of a mud-bath. Besides, it is more our fault than the pig’s taste. The pig likes a cold bath; [[332]]it submits with every indication of satisfaction to being washed and brushed by its keeper. So fond is it of cleanliness that it alone of all the domestic animals hesitates to soil its bed with its excrement. Why then does the word pig suggest the idea of dirtiness? Here we are to blame, more often than not. Let the pig be given clean water for its bath, and it will turn its back on the foul mud that it contents itself with for want of something better; let its premises be kept clean, and the poor animal will be highly delighted, much preferring a sanitary straw bed to a filthy hole. By these attentions to cleanliness the animal will be the gainer, and we shall profit likewise.
“In lifetime the pig is of no use to us, unless it be in hunting for truffles, an exercise in which it excels by reason of the extraordinary development of its nose and the keenness of its scent. Yet even for this service the dog is preferred, as being better fitted for exploring uneven ground, more active, and more intelligent. It is after its death that the pig pays us for the care bestowed upon it. Let us be present at this event, a festive occasion for the family.