Breakfast with Penelope

I have spent a little time with pigs.  I have read, researched, watched and visited. I have done so much learning about animals humans use for food.  I have sobbed and screamed about how they are abused and murdered.  I changed my entire life because of what I have learned.  But nothing could compare to the few minutes yesterday morning when I sat with Penelope having coffee while she ate her breakfast next to me.  Day two with a pig in my life.  I know that pigs are extremely intelligent (although I try to refrain from judging intelligence or any other ability based on human assumption), I know that they are social, emotional, affectionate and very communicative.  But it brought me to tears yesterday, sitting with Penelope watching her eat.  How she would take a few bites of food, then a drink of water, how she has so many different sounds and communicates with me so clearly, how she gets bored even in her very large area out in the sun with dirt and things to do and room to run, how fast she can run, how incredibly intelligent she really is and how we can not possibly understand how much we don’t know about pigs, how we had to just move her a few inches to close a gate and just that little bit of restraint was clearly upsetting to her, how she likes to feel safe and covers herself in her straw and blankets to sleep at night, how she needs someone else to snuggle up with, how she loves to lie in the sun and feel it’s warmth and how she needs attention.  And all I could imagine is the millions and millions of other pigs just like her born on farms with the only intention of bringing them into this world to be killed when still babies and eaten by humans.  They are tortured and abused, crammed into gestation crates, unable to turn or move at all for their entire lives, never able to run, feel the sun on their skin, dig in the dirt, root for delicious food, love their children, burrow into warm hay, feel a loving touch or play.  When the torture chamber is over they are brutally slaughtered and then consumed as human's beloved bacon or ham.  I cried yesterday sitting with Penelope.  The reality was so overwhelming.  She is one.  One of billions of animals who face this life every year.  But one who can be an ambassador for the others.  Perhaps each person who meets her will make the connection and change for her and for them. 

​Please, let us help you make the connection.