Honey, Do You Think We Should Bolt the Pig Down?

A few months ago during my normal rush-to-get-ready-for-work routine, my wife asked (as we headed out the door), “Honey, do you think we should bolt the pig down?”

The question stopped me dead in my tracks. I really didn’t know how to answer that.

As a husband/father/halfway-mature adult I’ve pondered some weighty matters in life.

Questions like:
“Daddy, are we there yet?”
“Why am I bowlegged?”
“If a chicken and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs will 24 chickens lay in 24 days?”
“Grampa, where did your hair go?”

From childhood to adulthood we find it difficult trying to answer these and other perplexities.

And now I was baffled once again. Not quite as puzzled as on the “1.5 Chicken” question, but perplexed nonetheless.

We had bolted down Gunslinger Frog a couple years ago, and so it just seemed reasonable to Kay that we should bolt the pig down.

My wife was of course referring to the small metal sculptured flying pig that we have sitting on the backyard steps.

Of course.


Why bolt the frog and pig down? The answer is simple: wind and thieves – we don’t want them blowing around and we don’t want them going home with strangers. A couple of years ago I argued forcibly to have Gunslinger mounted on the deck in the front of the house so he could be readily visible to all of the people on our busy residential street. I so much wanted them to be able to enjoy the redneck flea market artwork also.

But I lost the argument. “The Frog,” Kay said with a fervor rarely seen in a Norwegian, “Stays in the back!”

And speaking of high-brow art (if I may digress for a moment). At my daughter and son-in-law’s place in the country they just remodeled their bathroom. And for a while they had the old toilet sitting between the house and hot tub room, waiting to be hauled to the landfill. A friend of our 8 year old grandson (Noah) came over to their place to play one day. As our daughter and Noah and his friend Ricky drove into their driveway and parked not too far from the toilet, Noah deadpanned, “Hey Ricky, we’re remodeling the bathroom so you have to go out here.” His friend replied with a look of horror, “NO WAY!”

I mentioned to my wife that we could put that toilet in our front yard for a planter, but she declined. I thought that geraniums would look real nice in it. I then suggested to our son-in-law that he put it in their little pond where the sump pump shoots out like Old Faithful every few minutes. They could place the toilet directly over the protruding sump pump line. And every few minutes – the seat would fly up and water would come gushing out of the bowl like a geyser.

I ask you, what’s cooler than that? Who WOULDN’T want one of those in their yard?

Back to the pig and frog.

So each evening when I come home from work, I greet the frog. “Yo Gunslinger, whazzup?”

And the pig…well the pig never did get bolted down. He hasn’t gone home with strangers yet – apparently there’s not much of a call among thieves in our area for flying pigs. And as for flying? Well he sits lower to the ground than the frog and thus is more stable than Gunslinger, so he’s less likely to get airborne in the wind. Although he does have little wings.

HOLD IT! Come to think of it, I hope I DO see him flying! Why? Because it would be an answer to one of the most disconcerting and baffling questions I’ve faced in my entire life.

Whether I ask friends or family or coworkers or acquaintances or neighbors, the answer I inevitably get to my life-long question is simply, “When pigs fly!”

And the question?

“Will the Minnesota Vikings ever win the Super Bowl?”