The International Writers Magazine: It's Pig's Life
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A Lot of Pigs • John Vaughn I work with a fellow who has an opinion on everything. He’s one of those guys who are deeply passionate about everything from string theory to knitting needles. I know for a fact that he doesn’t really ever do anything himself, but if he ever decided to it would probably be perfect.

Most of the time I just tune him out whenever he starts pontificating about whatever new development in the world is crying out for his uninformed interpretation, but the other day I was intrigued by something that he said.

He said that wherever there is chaos, there is also opportunity.  Now normally I wouldn’t pay any attention to any of his corny comments but something about what he said stuck in my mind. I’ve guess the reason that I have been giving this idea a great deal of thought is because unless I am very much mistaken there is definitely an overabundance of chaos going around. Some people are saying that our entire economic system is broken and cannot be fixed. It seems like a lot of people are sure depressed about the future.
 
So I made up my mind that I would start looking around for opportunity, especially in places where everyone else could only see chaos.

And darned if I didn’t experience one of those things that the witty people call an epiphany. It was a lot like getting struck by lightning. One minute my head was as completely empty as a politician’s pledge and an instant later I was zapped by inspiration.
 
I was driving by an abandoned warehouse at the time and thinking how empty the large parking lot looked with no cars or trucks in it and weeds beginning to poke up through the tarmac, when out of the blue I realized what a great place this would be to raise pigs.
 
All a guy really needs is a large flat location that can be easily fenced off, some food pans, and a lean-to to provide some shelter for the pigs during hail storms.  The fence wouldn’t need to be very tall, just sturdy enough to hold in a pig. The water running off the warehouse roof could quite easily be channeled into some shallow drinking ponds. The building itself provides a lot of shade and protection from the wind. The more I thought about my idea the easier it was to imagine hundreds of little piglets scurrying around and playing in the vacant parking spots.
 
There is one large warehouse near my house that was used for the production of explosive detonators for car air bags, but nowadays all of this production has been shipped over to China so the warehouse site has been sitting empty for at least ten years. It only took a few phone calls and not much of an investment to arrange for a lease of the derelict parking lot surrounding the large manufacturing plant. After all, everyone knows that none of these manufacturing jobs will ever come back to America.
 
I started off with 100 pigs and a couple of boars and then just sat back and let nature take her course. It wasn’t long until I had 200 pigs, then 400 pigs. There were litters in all of the deserted parking places. It was easy to feed the pigs, I just gathered up all of the cast off food from the local homeless shelters that wasn’t of high enough quality for the homeless people to eat. I could usually fill the back of my truck with peanut butter, crab apples, cheese, and crackers by just visiting a couple of food banks in the area. An occasional rain storm kept the pigs hydrated and a local greenhouse owner came in and hauled off most of the dried pig droppings. I have started selling the older pigs to the thousands of illegals who live near my warehouse. They don’t mind slaughtering them (or harvesting them, as we say around the ladies) and its better food than they were used to eating back home.
 
I stand to clear a million dollars in the next couple of years. You know that fellow was definitely on the right track – where there is chaos, there is opportunity.

© John Vaughn  March 2012
djvaughn@q.com

Editor's Note: Yes this is fiction but if you are tempted by this story to get rich Animal Care and Animal Rights are paramount and come before you make your million!

Take Care of Pigs the Right Way

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