Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Stories for my kids - Chapter 1

Once upon a time in a far away country under the name of Spain there was a farm in which many animals lived merrily together. Amongst them there were many pigs. The pigs were fed everyday abundantly by the humans who owned the farm. All kinds of foods and rubbish were thrown at them. All the pigs ate thoughtlessly and greedily and got fatter and fatter. Amongst them there was one pig named Pablo. He ate as much as the others, but he couldn’t help thinking that there was something fishy in all these treats and gluttony in which they were allowed to indulge. Pablo saw that other animals in the farm received far less food than they did. He wondered why. Besides, there were all those sudden disappearances of the older, fattest pigs…


One day, Pablo decided to venture inside the human quarters and look for answers to the questions that haunted him. So, taking advantage of the lack of attention from the dozing dogs and the busy humans, he entered the house and rumbled through the corridors and rooms. He hadn’t gone too far when he arrived at a horrifying place: an empty room with a high ceiling from which dozens of pig legs hanged monstrously. What a frightening view it was indeed for poor Pablo! He rushed out of the house, his heart racing and his head spinning in dizziness and panic. 

Pablo tried to convey what he had seen to the other pigs. He told them not to eat without control and get too fat or they would end up losing their legs and being hanged in the human quarters. Nobody believed him. “What should we refuse to feast on what we are offered?” they replied and mocked his anxiety. “We’re happy the way things are now, so do not tell us horror tales and ask us to give up the comfort that we have”, they told him.

Pablo understood that he was not going to change the habits of all those pigs. They even refused to go and see for themselves the room where the legs hanged. His only way to save his tail (and legs) would be to keep quiet, wait for his chance and run away from that place, alone or in company. So he waited and waited until one day he noticed that the humans had forgotten to close the entry door to the pigsty. He escaped, left the farm and disappeared under the night shadows. 

Nobody knows for sure what happened to the pig. Some people say that he escaped to the mountains and became a wild pig and might still live there. Some others say that he fell to the river. Some say that he went to the city and became a politician. Let’s just hope that his legs are not hanging in somebody’s ceiling, curing and hardening for the pleasure of those cruel humans…

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