I have two new friends, Jillian and Mitchell. They are still young and weigh over five hundred pounds. Each. Oh yeah, they’re pigs. I don’t mean they’re sloppy eaters or especially messy—I mean they’re pigs. The new book I am planning, Will Sparrow’s Road, has a character who is a pig. She’s a trained pig called The Duchess, and she can tell time and do card tricks. In order to write about her, I had to get to know pigs. Glenda Pearson of BaaHaus Animal Sanctuary here on Vashon Island kindly let me come and play with two of her pigs. Now I know that pigs wag their tails much like dogs, they don’t smell bad, and they are very fast, very smart, and very stubborn. When Will Sparrow’s Road is published in, oh, three or so years, you can see what else I learned about pigs.
Want to read a good book? I read two this week: Rodman Philbrick’s The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg is a rip-roaring adventure starring, of course, Homer P. Figg, who sets off to rescue his brother from the horrors of the Civil War and reaches the battlefield just in time to witness them first hand. I loved Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty and this book, although very different, is equally good. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate introduces us to Callie Vee, a reluctant young lady and budding scientist at the turn of the 20th century. I predict a sequel, which is good news because there’s lots more I want to know about the Tate family. Happy reading!
