My Pal Otis

When it was clear that my pot-bellied pig Otis was dead, I wrapped him and carried him to my car, and drove him to Highland Park where I buried him in the “family graveyard.” I had prepared a hole for him west of where I buried Cassius Clay. Helen and I had to dig the hole a little deeper because Otis was a bit bigger than I realized. I wanted to bury him deep enough so that stray dogs wouldn’t come by and disturb his body. After we buried Otis, we put some flowers on his grave, and I placed his “Otis, Kansas” license plate (which I always kept on his gate) nearby. On her music-device, Helen then played a song, Aad Guray Nameh by Shatam Kaur, as we sat thinking about Otis for a bit. I was sad, but I knew that Otis had a good life and a long life, for a pig!

After all, Otis lived over 19 years. My vet once told me that that was well over twice the average life for a pot-bellied pig. He’d gotten much slower in the last two years, and in the last six months, he was slow and unsteady on his feet, and he began to eat less and less.

He was up every day to eat when I was gone to Guatemala for two weeks in early December of 2011. But when I got home, Otis was lying on his bed and just grunted when I greeted him. I hugged him and I hand-fed him, and I felt that he experienced a certain ease that I was back. But I could also tell that he was on his way out.

I felt a great empathy for Otis. He was a big guy, for sure, but his personality was such that he always seemed like a little boy. I told him that everything was OK and that I was happy we had a good life together. I thanked him. I told Otis that it was OK to go on, if it was his time, if his body had become a burden. I whispered in his ear that it was OK, and that I loved him. He just grunted his friendly “oink” in return. Otis never got up, and he died a week later, on Hannukah.

It was the spring of 1993 when Otis came into our family. Dolores and I had talked about getting a pig, and the pot belly “craze” was fading out. Though we toyed with the idea of breeding pot-bellied pigs, Otis had been neutered, so that was not a viable idea. But that was OK, because we fell in love with Otis right away.

We learned a lot about the nature of “pig-ness” during Otis’ life. In fact, this was partly why we got Otis in the first place – we were going to learn about the nature of pig-ness, which is also an aspect of human-ness.

We learned that he certainly had a good memory, especially as it related to food. He once discovered a bag of carob pods that I had in the living room, and he nearly ate half the bag before I caught him. After that, any time he got into the house, he always went right to that spot where the carob had been.

Though we’ve heard that pigs are very smart, you can’t really compare them to dogs, for example. Dogs might not have pigs’ great memory, but they seem smarter due to their loyalty to their masters. I’m sure that Otis always recognized me from other people, but loyalty? I don’t think so. Pigs don’t seem to want or need close affinity to people in the way that dogs do. Nevertheless, later in his life when Otis was mostly alone, we did develop a “closeness.”

Yes, Otis was a pig, and yet he was such an individual! I learned to know what his sounds and grunts meant, so I knew when he was happy, when he felt threatened, when he was worried, and when he liked (or disliked) someone. His range of vocal sounds was broad and fascinating.

For his last few years, our cat Popoki would sleep with him, often lying on Otis’ big belly, which was always very warm. The two of them seemed to not just tolerate one another, but appeared to be good pals.

Since a pot-bellied pig’s expected life is about 7 to 9 yeas, we estimate that he was about 200 years old (by human standards) when he died.

Finally, when I went to Guatemala in 2011, Otis greeted me when I came back. He was lying down and didn’t get up. I tenderly rubbed his big nose and hand-fed him some hay. I kept him covered, and comfortable, and felt sad that my friend was departing.

And though I was sad, I felt a certain inner joy that he lived a long life with me, and that Helen was there to help me bury him and give him a special ceremony. I thought that I would go through a period of great sadness, but I didn’t. We had a good life together, and I was able to be there with him in the end of his very long life. I feel that some part of Otis will always be with me.



Postscript: A few days after I buried Otis, when I parked my car near his pen, I heard his distinctive oink. A trick of the mind? I like to believe Otis was saying goodbye to papa.