Sniffy & Piggy
The TO DO list
Yes, I also write things other than sci-fi!
What follows below is an excerpt from an unpublished book I wrote.
The book is called Sniffy & Piggy.
You can read more about the book here; My Pig Book. It sits there, in a folder, year after year and gnaws on me. You know? At this point, what the heck — here, read a bit of it “for free” as they say. If you have patience, please let me know what you think. After all, isn’t that what this Substack’s all about? Sharing our writing?
I do love these pigs and their world so so very much, and I hope you will too. It’s completely different than the usual sci-fi stuff you see here on Cabinet of Curiosities. Sniffy & Piggy drift into the Finnish forests and fantasy world of my childhood. A little bit of Moomin Trolls and little bit of Pippi Longstocking.
Here, I’m sharing the next chapter with you now, so you will get to know these diametrically opposed friends as they search for their inner pigs. I hope this brings you back to a warm breezy summer day in your childhood. Perhaps you’re sitting in the shade under a maple tree in your Grandmother’s backyard? A feeling of leisure surrounds you…
The TO DO list
Sniffy and Piggy pulled up a small table right below the "TO DO" billboard and began looking for books on wolves and how to fight carnivores. Each time they found anything remotely connected to wolves and fighting techniques Piggy put a bookmark in the book and brought it to their research station under the billboard.
When the clock struck midnight they finally called it a day and decided to rest until the morning. Piggy curled up on the couch in the living room and Sniffy retired to his bedroom. They decided it was best they stayed together now that things were uncertain. When Sniffy had gone to bed Piggy put a chair against the front door.
Piggy's thoughts took him back to the forest. He had lived there for years without encountering wolves. How strange. He had met foxes and wild boars and raccoons, and they had been extremely annoying and manipulative, but none had threatened his life. Not since the day a creature ate part of his ear. Piggy shuddered and scratched his left ear.
Once he had seen a bear at a distance, and she had roared: "Do. Not. Come. Closer." Piggy ran in the opposite direction for as long as he could until he collapsed onto the forest floor.
Piggy was not used to thinking complicated thoughts, but since he had moved in with Sniffy he had discovered that it was possible for him to think quite a lot of thoughts without falling back into the lazy happy state that usually kept him from hiding beneath the juniper tree. It was as if living inside a house made him able to think. It was hard to think when he had to run from place to place in the forest. He quietly hummed his three notes. If he had known anything about notes he would have noticed that each note had a slightly higher pitch than the previous one.
Piggy sat up on the couch fully awake. Yes, he did like to hum the three notes because they made him feel less alone in the forest. Yes, he did like to hide under the juniper tree branches because they reminded him a little of the house where he lived with his parents before they went on vacation and never came back. But how had he survived this long on humming three notes and hiding under a tree?
Piggy stood up and began walking around. It was as if he had met another pig inside of himself, a pig he barely knew but sometimes saw a flicker of. He liked to roll around in mud because it felt good, but he also knew, somewhere deep inside, that rolling in mud also had another purpose. It kept his scent hidden from things that liked to find pigs.
Again Piggy hummed one of the three notes and then stopped. No, no more humming for now. He needed to become the pig that didn't hum. At least for a while. Piggy's head hurt. He sat back down on the couch and sighed. The room was almost dark but some light came through the window. Morning was almost there.
A mosquito sat down on his left front leg and began preparing for a drilling session. Piggy watched the mosquito and tried to listen to it, but it had such a small and brittle voice that he could barely hear it. It tried and tried to get a hole drilled through Piggy's leg, but it couldn't.
There was a nice and thin coating of mud on Piggy's legs left over from the previous morning's walk. Finally the mosquito stopped and Piggy could hear a small but very angry mosquito scream: "They told me there would be good blood inside these walls. Now I've wasted perfectly good saliva on nothing! It will take me a whole day to resupply!" And then it flew off and did not return.
Both pigs were too nervous to eat much of a breakfast, but they ate a scone each and began writing the list. Every once in a while they looked things up in one of the books they had found the evening before.
This is what their list looked like when they were finished:
Day 1
- Sniffy: pack food + harvest carrots
- Piggy: hide food + find place in forest
- Look for map of forest
Day 2
- Lock root cellar and cover it
- Hide important books
- Hide important tools
- Read about wolves
Day 3
- Pack two backpacks
- Eat dinner
- Read about wolves
- Full moon tomorrow!
Day 4
- Destroy billboards
- Flee into forest
- Don't forget to lock door!
And Sniffy packed preserved vegetables and fruit and Piggy took long expeditions into various parts of the forest. He had covered himself in mud from head to feet, and listened and looked carefully as he moved among the trees. It was quiet on the ground, but in the air all sorts of smaller birds were calling and having loud discussions.
Piggy overheard one blue jay yell: "Stay high and you'll stay alive." He wondered if it might have something to do with Strig's warning. A swarm of flies followed him, and it made him feel safer. They didn't bother him all that much, except for when they tried to land on his eyes. He kept a birch branch on top of his head as a sort of hat, and that kept them away from his face.
Piggy found two spots to hide some food. One was under a strange shaped rock, and the other was in a pond. Piggy thought he was very clever to think of hiding food in water. He would lower the preserved jars into the water in a basket and tie a string to the basket and then cover the string with branches.
When he came back to the house Sniffy was harvesting carrots. He had four large wicker baskets filled with carrots and was ripping out more out of the ground.
"Must pick carrots. Must pick carrots," Sniffy kept repeating to himself. He was wearing his white overalls and a wide brimmed sun hat, and working feverishly while muttering to himself. Sniffy felt calmer when he worked in his own garden. Piggy stopped to inspect Sniffy's work, and it did look very impressive.
"Well, a pig's left foot! That is a lot of carrots!"
Sniffy responded:
"I have one more basket to fill. One more. Then I will stop and then I will have tea and then I will read. Must pick carrots. Must pick carrots." Sniffy kept picking carrots out of the ground while humming: "Must pick carrots, carrots I must pick."
"I am going to hide the food now," said Piggy. Piggy was relieved Sniffy had not looked up yet because he would not have liked the muddy pig that stood next to him. Or the hundreds of flies that had followed him into the garden.
"Good work, good work! Yes, hide the food and then come back and be careful, yes be careful. We will be safer here, for now," Sniffy huffed as he continued his maniac work pace.
Piggy went twice back into the forest to hide the food, and each time he took a different route. When he came back Sniffy was carrying the five baskets of carrots to the root cellar. Together they covered the carrots with soil in the root cellar and then went up to the house to have some tea.
At that point Sniffy exclaimed:
"You! There is mud all over you!" and he began to move in a very strange way, stepping in one place as if it was he who was covered in mud and not Piggy.
"This is how we'll dress in the forest," said Piggy, and that made Sniffy move in an even more strange manner. Now it looked like Sniffy was covered in a thousand bees and poison oak and it made Piggy feel very uncomfortable inside.
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Enjoyed this tale of PIggy and I hope the big badcwolf leaves them alone