Pigs 1 - Horses 1

Animals are smarter than you think! I say it all the time but every now and then I am lucky enough to see it in action.

I was at a wedding yesterday and it was literally thronging with beasts of every description. Besides the highly evolved primates waffling on about their holy union, there were two pigs, two horses and a whole multitude of less obvious birds, insects and possibly even a few billion bacteria on a sunny little estate in Northern Johannesburg behind a high voltage fence. The story is mostly about the pigs and horses.

Both pigs were bought as the Vietnamese Pot-belly variety that are supposed to stay small and cuddly. It soon became apparent to the loving owners that these porky fellows were not going to stay small at all and they duly grew into handsome specimens of full piggy size. Now in this strange household, the horses and the pigs lived together and at some point during the last few weeks, the immense stress of the wedding got to the one pig, lets call him *Mandibles, and he flew into a porcine rage and savagely bit the leg of one of the horses, lets call him *Sandwich. Sandwich was traumatised and quite badly lacerated by Mandibles' vicious bite and was removed from the stye/paddock and the vet was called in. Many hours of struggling later, the vet stitched Sandwich up and he was put into a locked stable for recovery and reflection. Mandibles, meanwhile was put into solitary to calm the hell down.

That left the other pig, lets call him *Punchbag, and the remaining horse, *Bruce Lee together in the open area in what can only be described as an uneasy truce. Now how the communication worked between horses or whether Bruce Lee simply acted alone, we may never know, but what we do know is that later that day, Bruce Lee exacted a brutal revenge by kicking Punchbag one hell of a shot in the side. Apparently Sandwich whinnied his approval from his vantage point at the stable door. As the Piglet noted (no relation to Punchbag or Mandibles), Horses 1 - Pigs 1.

So now the married couple are trying to piece the family back together which is not an easy thing when you have one horse-eating pig living with a pig-kicking horse and a whole bunch of abused victims that can't talk through their problems. It is not the first time I have experienced family fighting at weddings but it certainly wins the award for the most bizarre!

*Actual names of the animals involved were not used in order to protect them from possible revenge attacks.