Licorice- the Sassy Sausage

So now it's time to talk about Licorice, the longer lived of the two brothers.

Licorice was the larger, more neurotic of the two. He was apt to try and run when you went to pick him up and tended to have "shifty eyes"; as in the whites of his eyes would show in a manner that basically expressed "Oh crap, not again!" He, like his brother was solid black, but a smooth hair. He also had darker eyes and didn't get the "demonic red eye" that Schrapnel got for many flash pics.

It took a while for him to come out of his shell. Mind you, he loved attention, but he didn't really become his own pig until after Schrapnel was long gone. I chalk it up to mellowing with age. One thing that Licorice was NOT ambivalent about, was FOOD. Especially pig food in a dish. His fat little head was buried in the thing so often, that for quite some time he ranked easily as the heaviest of the three pigs.



He was curious, but also easily scared by noises- at least in the beginning, and retained the odd habit of charging around his cage doing laps and figure eights at high speed. He never did this on the floor, so I think it had to relate to his brother being absent from the cage as he only showed that behaviour while alone.

Licorice was a fool for carrots even though he LOVED all veggies and fruits. He had a HUGE sweet tooth. Grapes, apples, cherries, oranges...all were his victims. He enjoyed hay well enough, but a finger carrot or piece of apple was to be cherished for the entire thirty seconds it took to scarf it down. He was the type that could get too excited by eating or drinking and make loud coughing noises.

This pig LOVED to chew on metal. We found this out after he was snuffling at a friend's pocket. My friend took out his keys and dangled them for Licorice, who engrossed himself in chewing on them. This ritual was repeated just about every time he came over. Licorice also loved metal zippers, and managed to unzip my velvet top a few times by just pulling on the tab. Apparently, he also liked to watch videos on the computer as his pig sitter reported after we came back from an out of town visit.



As much as he was neurotic, he was on the flip side, an instigator. Sure, Schrapnel picked on him, but he went back for more. He ASKED for it. He loved to get up into Schrapnel's or Connor's face and burble his ass off. He was especially good at riling up the other pigs when not much was going on. He was never a fighter, just a burbling, dancing, troublemaker. And an enormous flirt.

Licorice was my "purr machine". That pig could burble and dance for a solid half minute without coming up for air. I watched him close up once when he was on my chest, walking towards me and purring. He was vibrating so much that his vision must have been blurry, and was doing this slow serpentine strut while making this face that said "Ah Honey, you KNOW you want some a this" He was the Barry White of pig. It was easy to set him off too- just pet his butt or rub his shoulders and off he went. A good neck rub would keep him going. He'd eventually wear down, but if you gave him a minute to reload, he'd be ready to rumble again.

His rumble dance drove poor Connor crazy sometimes, especially since the display usually ended with Licorice's nose deeply embedded in Connor's butt.

This brings us to another one of Licorice's favorite pastimes, whiffling. (collecting smells)He was a very vocal whiffler, voicing his enjoyment of the nuances of various smells he encountered. If he got wind of a smell, he'd whiffle for a minute straight, and if you tried to distract him he'd go right back or find another smell to obsess about (usually, butt smell from another pig) Sometimes, I think smelling where Connor had been on a towel was almost as good as a carrot.

He loved to hide in his purple castle, or his tubes- and in particular when he was young he loved to put his front feet up on top of the blue tube the brothers shared. I often thought it looked like he was waiting at the bar for a drink or something.



Licorice was a very stretchy pig, and many times I'd find him elongating himself to reach a treat, or hang over his tube, or sniff Connor's butt. This is partially why I called him my sassy sausage, among a billion other nicknames.

He did live up to the sassy sometimes, but he was such a little whiner when it came to nail trimming. He HATED it. He thought we were killing him every time we trimmed them. The modus operandi was my husband trimming, and me holding and distracting him with a carrot. He'd chomp away, but then cry as soon as he felt the clippers even close to his nails. I can't tell you how many times he tried to wiggle away or pull his foot away, making matters worse. It was almost as bad as when I tried to bathe the pigs when they got stinky.

Licorice absorbed smells, not just through his nose, but through his very being. He was such a wallower. Back when I had all three pigs, I tried to control this by bathing them. It didn't last long, and for that I'm quite sure they were all thankful. None of them liked getting lowered into the inch deep warm water in the plastic bin, but Licorice did his best to escape, and CRIED when I tried to gently blow dry him. I found that the best way to get him to smell better was to clean the cage more often, or throw down fresh bedding over the stinky areas he seemed to enjoy laying in constantly.

Like the other pigs, he became more personable the more he got handled. He loved going out for fresh grass in the yard, and was determined to not get put back in the carrier afterwards. He was good at posing for pictures; very patient in that aspect, and loved attention. I used to do a trick called "hypno piggy" with him. I would hold with my hand under his front feet and his butt resting on my right forearm, and slowly pet his head with my left hand. This resulted in his mouth falling open, his eyes closing, and his head (and sometimes front paws) falling back in a piggy trance. I have no idea how we started doing this, it just happened one day. :)

I don't know how pigs are with mirrors, or recognition of themselves, but I suspect Licorice may have understood. I would regularly take him to a mirror, and pet him, holding him next to my face and talking to him about the "handsome mirror pig". His eyes would look from my reflection, and his, to me, and back several times. And as I petted him, he would visibly relax and start "smiling". Whatever he really thought, I could at the very least tell he was happy whenever I did that.

Licorice was the first pig I had who got a bladder stone. It freaked me out, but he passed the stone easily and never had problems again. He was, for the most part, a really solid pig. That is, until we found out he had some tumors when he was four and a half.



It wasn't really a surprise when we heard about them from the vet, after losing his brother to cancer. It was obviously genetic. The difference with Licorice, was his were operable. The trouble started when I noticed one of his nipples was bigger than it should have been. He developed a breast tumor, and a tiny lump on his leg- both of which we found out were malignant. At the time, the vet said surgery should be easy enough to do and for him to get through. I was frazzled, and worried about him the whole time, but we had the surgery done and Licorice came home with one less nipple and a shaved leg. He was VERY happy to see me, and came through with flying colors. The vet did say however that the leg tumor was aggressive and could recur, so we kept an eye out.

Licorice went about a year and a half after the surgery cancer free, happy and healthy. We really bonded along the way. He loved being snuggled- he'd just fall asleep in a blanket on my lap, or inside my hoodie, trying to hang off my hip like it was a hammock. He loved to sit on the pillows on the couch in winter and nap in sunbeams. He also did the "thank you" purr whenever he got veggies. And throughout his life, much like his brother, he was a consummate food siren when the fridge opened.



Licorice was the only pig thus far, that I had ever heard chirping. Now, for those of you who know, chirping among pigs is not common, and there seems to be little consensus about why pigs chirp. Licorice decided to wait until his old age to try this trick, which he did twice in one day, and never again. I heard what I thought was a bird in the house, and went to where the sound was coming from thinking a bird had flown in the window. NO BIRD. I checked on the pigs. Licorice was just sitting there, as if nothing had happened, and Connor was his grumpy old self. So, I walked away. I heard the chirping again, followed it, and followed it to Licorice's cage. Again, he's just sitting there, nothing odd, no weird expression. Nothing. He never did it again. I swear the pig was messing with me.

The leg tumor did recur sometime after his 6th birthday (Nov. 21 for the brothers). We kept an eye on it, it was slow growing, but we saw it was not going to stop. Because of finances, and his age, we decided that we couldn't do the surgery this time. He was doing excellent for an older pig, but we just couldn't see putting him through it again. His once black lips were now spotted with pink, as were his little black feet and he had a few occasional white hairs. Those was the only signs of age you could see on him.



The lump got to what must have been an uncomfortable size for him- and yet he was still able to walk, run, and climb the side of the cage for food with no outward sign of pain. It eventually must have hurt him though, and in his last days, to make it easier for him to not scrape it, I made this stupid little "knob cozy"- essentially a little blue mob cap that went over his leg lump with elastic. As disturbing as the size of it was, if i tickled it- it was in one of his purr trigger spots- he would set off burbling up a storm.

It did metastasize eventually- it was only a matter of time, and spread to his lungs. He had very few truly uncomfortable days, fortunately. We fed him whatever he wanted, and when he wasn't up to eating solid food anymore, we gave him critical care. He was so happy to even have carrot baby food that he purred for me on his last evening with us. We tucked him in his purple fleece, after petting and snuggling him. I was sure he wouldn't last the night, but he was still with us the next day. He was very weak, and I was afraid to pick him up, but I hoisted him up on his blankie and snuggled with him after feeding him.

As I was snuggling with him, and we were both falling asleep in the afternoon, he finally passed away. It was the first time I had seen a pig die since Brownie, and though it was as heartbreaking as I remember, I was glad me and my husband were there for him. I'm sure he was glad as well.We wrapped him in his purple fleece, and with a few treats, we buried him near the lawn he had so happily chewn on for so many years.



At my vet when a patient of theirs dies, they send a card signed by everyone, and if the pet was accessible to them, a clipping of their fur and a paw print. I didn't know they did this until Schrapnel died, and I bawled my eyes out when the first card came. Since Licorice died at home, I took my own paw print and snipped a tiny bit of his fur for his memorial. (I already had one set up for Schrapnel)

Licorice will have been gone only a year near the end of this month. It's hard to believe sometimes that it hasn't been that long. What I miss most about him is his affectionate, flirty nature. He lived to be six years and nine months old, which is a good life for a pig. Never long enough for me, but when you consider how many trips to the lawn, how many carrots, and how many sunbeam naps one can take in that amount of time, he had a very full life.