Current call for action: Rosi!

Rosi is a dazzlingly beautiful 9 year old potbellied pig lady. She was abandoned at the Hoffnung für Tiere ("Hope for animals") shelter near Dresden, Germany, when her humans divorced. Apparently there was no place for their faithful companion of nine years in their lives anymore.
Due to Rosi's age and the fact that she has developed a breast tumour, the shelter doesn't believe she will find a new home anytime soon, if ever. But you can become her "godfather"/"godmother" and sponsor her so she will be able to live the last years of her life happily and comfortably at the shelter.
Here is the shelter's potbellied pig page with more about Rosi (in German, with many pictures). If you know German you can use the sponsorship form, and if not, you can contact the shelter directly.

A pig-shaped three course dinner! With recipes!

Starters:
Nissin pig cup noodles!



Wye Jon Lee reports about the Nissin cup noodles with animal figures. There are dogs, pandas and foxes, but my favourites are of course the pigs! The soup doesn't contain any actual meat. Wye Jon Lee says the "heads" are pretty much tasteless, but the pig soup overall has an aromatic curry flavour.
You can find these instant noodles in Japan and many other Asian countries. Cup noodles are easy to prepare - just bring water to boil, add the contents of the bag to the water, and let simmer or stand in the water until the noodles are soft. Bon appetit!


Main course:
Pig pirozhki!



Saechka.ru features a recipe of Russian baked yeast dough pirogues in the shape of pigs, written by Anya (anette). The recipe is with meat filling, but you can substitute it with vegetarian alternatives. One personal favourite is a mix of potatoes, mushrooms, garlic and spinach. Saechka.ru is in Russian only, but russianrecipes.co.nz has an English-language recipe with the same type of dough. You just form the pirozhki into piggies instead, and give them "eyes" of black pepper.
To get more veggie action you can have sliced fresh cucumbers and tomatoes on the side, maybe with smetana? Of course, you can shape the cucumbers into pig form, too ...


Dessert:
Chocolate Peppermint Polka Dot Pigs!



Sarah at Once Upon a Cookie shares her recipe of lovely polka dot piggy cookies, adapted from a recipe in The Good Cookie by Tish Boyle. The mix of dark cocoa dough and white chocolate dots probably tastes as yummy as it looks!

Two concrete examples of prejudice about pigs

This is Eddy. He is currently the only pig staying at the Berlin animal shelter, where he came after his family abandoned him because of "changed living conditions".

This weekend the shelter participated in a local "family weekend" event, and invited the public to lots of fun activities and a market with good food and pet related goods. The weather was really bad, but quite a lot of people still came.

When I found Eddy, he made my heart sing. I talked to him in pigspeak and took several dozens of photos of him. While I was standing there, some other people came along, too.

Among the more neutral comments I heard was, "Yeah, you know, some people keep pigs in their apartment."

An older couple came along and stared at Eddy. Then the woman started to make faces, noises and gestures implying that there was a strong bad smell there.
But there was no bad smell at all! Only the smell of straw!

Then a family with two children, maybe 7-10 years old, came along. The girl kept muttering, "He's so fat."
Eddy isn't full grown yet, and he is quite slender for a pet pig. He doesn't even have a double chin. In accordance with his breed standard, he has a little tummy, but it would never cross my mind to consider him "fat" because of that. (Here is a full-figure photo of Eddy.)
I asked the girl why she said he was fat, but she just stared at me and left without a word. (The parents, as usual, were totally autistic towards their children and didn't exchange any thoughts with them at all.)

The only sensible explanation I have for these comments is that these people have learned that pigs are supposed to smell and that pigs are supposed to be fat, and they can't break free of those false images even when the actual reality is right in front of them.

Current call for action: Ferkelprotest!

Something I will feature from time to time on this blog is a link to a current pig rights-related action.

The first one is the German Tierschutzbund e.V. action against the castration of male piglets without anaesthesia. This obviously subjects the little pigs to terrible pain. Every year, over 20 million male piglets are castrated without anaesthesia.

But together we can fight to change German law, so that castration without anaesthesia will be outlawed!

On the website ferkelprotest.de you can add your signature to protest against this cruel practise.

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Are you not German? Find out whether castration without anaesthesia is also practised in your country. If it is, protest against it! Contact your local animal rights NGOs and fight together.

Hero Pig of Sichuan

The tremendous Sichuan earthquake has hit both humans and animals in the region hard. Chinese comic artist Coco Wang has taken some of the sad and amazing stories from Sichuan and made English-language comics of them.

A story that Coco Wang has not (yet) made into a comic is the story of the hero pig who survived 36 days underneath rubble, eating only charcoal and drinking rain water.

When the earthquake hit on the 12th of May, in the village Lunmengshang [ru. Лунмэньшань] near the city Pengzhou, a certain pigsty also collapsed. As soldiers came to clean up the rubble on June 17th, they discovered that one pig was still alive.



The story of the pig was spread all over the country in the media, and the brave pig became a symbol of will. "Millions of people" prayed that the "hero pig" would escape the butcher for the rest of its life.

Fan Jianchuan, curator of the Jianchuan Museum nearby, finally bought the pig and assures that it will get to live in peace and die of old age. The museum has named the pig "Zhu Jianqiang", "Strong Pig".

The farmer couple recall: "The moment the pig was rescued from the ruins, we used a board to protect his eyes from the glaring sunshine. And we saw the animal shed tears when we fed him later. We are too poor to feed him, so we had to sell him."

Sources:
russian.xinhuanet.com
china.org.cn

There is more pig-shaped food!

I've been generally discouraged by the state of affairs for pigs in the world, so I haven't posted anything here for a while. However, the Russian pig lovers' LiveJournal community ru_piggy recently featured a collection of photos of pig-shaped food that I want to share ... Follow this link.

Censored pig cookie bum

Flickr user Carol Browne bought a Chinese pig cookie for New Year's 2007 from a local Asian shop in Vancouver, Canada. Guess where the bakers chose to insert the red bean paste ...

See more pictures of the pig cookie!



Censored pig bum
Originally uploaded by Carol Browne

Pig cake, Shanghai

A probably very yummy cake in the shape of a black piggy - with a ribbon! I wonder what it says on its back ...
Photographed by meckleychina on Flickr.


Pig of the Day - Jun 09, 2007 - Shanghai
Originally uploaded by meckleychina

Pigs in the Pergamon Museum

Today I visited the Pergamon Museum here in Berlin. Of course, I scanned all the exhibits searching for pig motifs, and I indeed found a few.

I apologise for the bad quality of some (most) of the photos. Bad lighting conditions, no flash, handheld camera, crappy white balance, and all that.



Above: Double vessel in the form of two little pigs, Assyria, 8th/7th century BCE. They are likely to be domestic pigs, which makes them quite interesting - pigs didn't seem to be all that common in Assyrian arts and crafts. And is there some particular meaning behind the double shape?



Above and below: Boar's head, Babylon, 1st century BCE/year 12 of Nebukadnezar II. It's hard to tell what exact meaning the boar might have in this case.



Below: This piece was described only collectively as one of a number of "riders and animal figures", but it can hardly be anything but a boar. 2nd-1st century BCE, Babylon. The hairiness of the pig suggests that it's likely to be a wild boar.





Below: An object from Luristan, a province in western Iran inhabited by nomadic tribes. These objects are usually offerings from graves. Somewhere between 8th/7th - mid-3rd century BCE. I'm not sure about its function. The similar piece with a deer above it and the nomadic culture of its makers suggest a hunting theme.



Below: A wall relief plate with a jumping boar, Iraq (Ktesiphon area), 7th-6th century. From the intrados of a house in Umm az-Za'âtir. I'm guessing this piece is related to hunting, as well.



Below: Hunting bowl with a Sassanid great king attacked by a boar, Iran, 7th century. Silver, partly gilded. The wild boar as a dangerous adversary. Of course, the king will be victorious in the end ...



Below: A seal stone (to the left) with a wild boar and Pahlavi inscription, Iran, 5th-6th century. To the right is an enlarged image of its impression. I wish I knew what the incription says.