O
n a busy Carolina highway, a truck full of chickens navigates the lanes toward the slaughterhouse. It carries crates packed full of white feathered birds, clucking curiously, oblivious to their fate. Suddenly, as the vehicle motors down the road, a lone chicken tumbles out of the bed of the truck and onto the shoulder, injured but alive. There she lays, as traffic speeds past her broken body, until a car finally stops. A person rushes out, scoops her into their arms, and gets back in the vehicle. They make a call, and once again, the bird is riding down the same Carolina highway; this time, being enveloped in a gentle touch and kind words. Soon, she is given a name, and within hours, her broken leg has been set by a trained veterinarian technician. Then, she is given a comfortable place to sleep, plenty of room to roam once her leg heals, fresh food, and clean water. Most of all, she is given a second chance at life. Along a dusty dirt road in a rural area of South Carolina, a woman heads home. As she does every day, she passes a neighbor’s land, and her heart sinks again at the sight of the two horses in the makeshift pasture, their bones sticking out more than she has ever seen. She pauses, and looks at the pair. The mother is swaying, clearly sick with starvation, and the son doesn’t look much better. The woman makes a decision. She cannot stand for this any longer. She makes a call, and soon, two men are knocking at her neighbor’s door. An agreement is reached, and the men load the horses into a trailer shortly after. The woman’s heart fills
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with hope. Maybe, the mother and son can have a chance at a better life. At a rest stop somewhere in the Southeast, an excited woman awaits the arrival of a breeder she found online. After seeing countless posts on social media featuring shockingly small “teacup” pigs, she finally convinced her landlord to allow her to have one, promising him exactly what the breeder promised her: that it would not get any larger than 50 pounds. The breeder arrives, hands her the pig, and takes his payment. Then, he is gone, never to be heard from again. The woman returns home, falls in love with her tiny, intelligent little pet, and begins to care for him. Before long, the pig has reached 20 pounds, then 30, and then 40. The landlord eyes it warily, but the woman promises that it will top out at 50 pounds, while quietly beginning to question if the breeder was being completely upfront. As it grows, the pig begins to have difficulty scaling the three floors of steps up to his owner’s apartment, and the woman has a harder time carrying him around. By the time the pig hits 100 pounds, the landlord has had it. Tearfully, the woman makes a call, and within hours, is saying goodbye to her pet: the teacup pig who never was. Like so many people these days, she was fooled into believing that what was actually a standard potbellied pig could remain small, and both she and the pig grieve the loss of each other. Though he has now experienced a heartbreaking loss, the pig will live the remainder of his life in a more suitable environment thanks to the phone call his owner made, and eventually, he will find happiness again.