Piggies’ Revenge

 

The Revenge of the Pigs

          by Drywall Dougie Two-Studs

They built a house of straw and the Wolf said, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” and he did and he almost got to eat the little pigs. They built a house  of wood and he huffed and he puffed and nearly got to eat the residents. Finally, they built one of brick and he huffed and he puffed till he felt so tired that he laid down on the gorse and slept for a while to catch his breath. While he slept, the three pigs approached, tilted a bucket of morning toast over him and poured it out so that he was covered in filth and urine. Suddenly less tired, he leapt up and before they’d made it halfway to their door he’d caught two of them by their trotters and squeezed them squirming to his furry chest. He took one bite out of the smaller of the two and immediately regretted it, covered in excrement from off his own person, as it was, and tasting vile.

     “Phooey!” He yelled. “How horrible! How absolutely sickening!” He dropped both pigs and pursued the last one, which he caught just as it was trying to open the solid oak door. He took a tentative bite, careful not to clasp the squirming oinker to his fur, and announced to nobody in particular that it would do just fine. The third pig had only been tasted and did not instantly succumb to red Death’s flashing sickle, his wound not life-threatening. He squealed for help. His two beshatten brethren, demonstrating that some pigs occasionally act with nobility of purpose, rose up as one and, showing their true colours, came running just as quickly as their chubby little legs would carry them. Incensed to the point of rage, they both simultaneously and as one bit the wolf on his nethers with such piggy ferocity that he flung down his  catch and twirled round to snatch up the offenders. Oh! miscalculation! Oh! barbarous ill luck! With an alacrity that the porky flock as a species seldom show, and with next to no indication of a troubled conscience, the clean pig (with the bite out of him), finding himself momentarily free, turned in horrid rage on his enemy and clamped him an enormous set of bites on the soft parts at the backs of both knees. He actually wrenched out of that part of the wolf two pieces of flesh, each three or four cubic inches in size. Incensed now almost to madness, the beast whirled howling and frothy with humiliated pride and stupendous pain to assert his interests over his most recent attacker. Quick as a wink, the other two soiled animals, as if in a planned affront, fronged at the canine with such sharp and terrible purpose that both of his hind legs immediately quivered and became useless. Stunned, he shat himself. Then, his useless legs unable to balance him, he fell into the stinky pile and rolled back and forth in it trying to right himself and find his slippery way onto clean grass, resigned finally to pulling himself along inch by inch onto cleanliness with his front paws. 

     The three brothers had pierced his armour, so to speak. From that moment onward the wolf, who survived this episode and lived another two decades to lament this day, sauntered about on his wounded legs; not on his paws but on his knuckles, his arms and legs having been all four of them foreshortened by the biting. 

     The three pigs after that adventure became tired of the tedium of house-living and house-construction. They began to wander the world in search of violent types, and especially wolves. When they found one alone, they attacked him or her with such great vigour and persistence that the individual either succumbed and died, or left the spot with damaged limbs and a contrite heart.

     Now, one day—a fine sunny day without a cloud visible anywhere and the world rich with the perfume of lavender and lilac—the three sat in a small pub in Ireland, near the city of Belfast. Three men entered. The habiliment had few patrons and seemed as quiet as anyone could wish a small pub to be for the sake of peace and restful drink. Immediately, the youngest of the pigs whispered to the others that here were men who might make a proper mark. And, of course, from the ruffled look of them (the word “ruffian” etymologically depends from “ruffled”), clearly deserved a good roughing up to teach them civility of dress and manners (the pigs always in a state of exquisite dress). 

     “They do not appear to possess much capital, but they do look fierce and seem self-possessed as if they are accustomed to giving orders,” this little pig said.

      “True,“ the oldest agreed. “We may have to teach them a lesson, don’t you know?” With that he got up and asked two of the men to step outside for a word. They seemed surprised but did as he asked, for he appeared to them to be an individual with authority and rank. Once the doors closed on the two, the other pigs attacked the fellow left inside and made short work of him. He screamed in pain and ran toward the back door missing one hand and three fingers on the remaining one. The two men outside came rushing in at the sound of agony, but the two pigs were ready. They tripped the first at the doorway and, pouncing on him forthwith, bit him through the throat so that in a twink he lay nearly lifeless, just on the happy side of having no minutes left to amend his ways and prepare for an infant’s encounter with the world to come. The other man prayed and begged for his life to be spared and the pigs magnanimously forgave him and let him go. Little did they know that these three were notorious IRA soldiers and that they, the pigs, would now be on the most wanted list of that terrible organization.

     They did not mind. During the next months and even years, they foiled each and every attempt at their lives with the same dexterity with which they had defused Mr. Wolf. Within five years the entire Irish Republican Army lay in ruins. Not a man alive would accept an assignment to attack and take revenge on the pigs. With that a new age came to Europe, and the tourist industry began to flourish both on the island and on the continent. 

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