5:19
He wouldn't put a price on a piglet's life
"Sometimes it takes a 12-pound animal to put your life in perspective," says Todd of Arthur's Acres Animal Sanctuary. The animal he means is Mikey. more
The sanctuary has 70 animals in its care, and it specializes in special needs pigs. One day Todd got a message from the vets at Cornell, where four of his pigs were at the time. Some people had just shown up with a baby pig who had been attacked by their dog. He was not doing well.
They had set a limit of $500 for his care, and the bill had already reached $400. The vet asked if Todd would think about adopting him. His own vet bills were sky-high. But when he started the sanctuary, he had vowed never to put a price on an animal's life.
He called back and told them to give the piglet the best care possible. "We knew you'd say yes," they said. The vets did brain surgery and had to remove part of his skull. For a while, Mikey did little but spin in circles, always the same way.
Slowly he got better, and soon he was ready to go home. "He knows I'm his new dad," Todd says, and he tells Mikey, "I'm gonna take care of you forever and ever and ever." He came home a fragile little boy, and Todd bought a crib for his own room, because crates are cold.
A couple of days later, Mikey began breathing loud and hard. Back at Cornell, the vets found an infection that had nearly closed his sinuses, and he stayed another week. Home again, he needed a nebulizer twice a day. Todd says a pig who just ate bananas, with a nebulizer on his face, is "the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life."
Mikey sleeps in Todd's bed every night. Todd felt he never got that nurturing from his mother, and that to heal, he needed to feel loved. "You haven't lived till you've slept in a bed with a pig," he says. He wakes in the night to kiss Mikey's cheek and nose, and Mikey soaks it all in.
SaveThen Mikey turned the corner, and now he breathes fine, runs, plays and grazes. His head still tilts a little, which puts him in what Todd calls "the crooked head crew." For a pig who had part of his skull removed, a small tilt is a fair trade. "I think we'll take that every day of the week," Todd says.
He goes wild for bananas, blueberries and strawberries. "You can get him to climb a mountain with a banana," Todd says. These days he is into cucumbers, and he wants nothing to do with lettuce.
Todd figures Mikey will sleep in his bed for maybe another month, then move out to the barn when he feels ready. "I'm going to walk up to the house and he's going to walk the other way," Todd says. It hurts his heart, but Mikey will have family with Todd and with the other pigs. "You're safe, buddy," Todd tells him. "No one's ever gonna hurt you again."
