My Stint as a Pig Surgeon

During the end of 2016 I was pressed into service as a pig surgeon. You see, the outdoor holiday pigs, seen here in 2015,

started having health problems partway through their 2016/2017 season.

First, the pig with the Santa hat but no jacket lost his head. That is, the lights through his body still worked, but the lights in his head had gone dark. I took him inside and began the laborious process of replacing the bulbs one-by-one with a good bulb. I hadn't achieved anything by the time I was forced to remove his head from the torso (it sits on prongs) to reach the lights inside. When I lifted the head, suddenly the lights came back on! Something was loose, apparently. I put the head back on, and the lights stayed on. I took Santa pig outside, and he continued to illuminate. The patient had been healed through physical therapy.

In a few days the head of the winged pig with halo, far left, went dark. This time, no amount of substituting bulbs or taking the head on and off would cure the illness. Joan found another pig to order, a dancer, and the halo pig was interred in our basement.

But then, the head of the other Santa pig went dark! This indicates something about the lifespan of these imported pigs. Again, it could not be directly revived.

However, as you may have guessed already, there was a circuit of good bulbs available: the torso bulbs of the halo pig. It was time to perform an organ transplant. I removed the bulb string from the halo pig and snipped out the dead sub-string that had gone to the head. I snipped out the dead sub-string in the head of the Santa pig. Then I installed the torso string from the halo pig into the head of the Santa pig. The operation was a success, with no hint of organ rejection. The only side effect is that the Santa pig now has two electrical plugs.

With the arrival of the dancer pig and the various surgical procedures, we had a happy group of four in the front yard again.

(This photo was taken with a shorter exposure than the 2015 one; compare the window in the upper left corner and the illumination of the grass.)

I hope my pig-surgeon skills are not called upon again soon.