Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990 TAG: 9005170193
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
The 680-pound swine was led down the garden path and out to slaughter, the victim of man's brutish ways.
"They just sent her off to market without a fare-thee-well," said Karin Stoll, who raised the 4-week-old piglet to full-grown in the Martha's Vineyard town of West Tisbury only to see her end up in the hands of Jimmy Dean sausage makers.
"She had no business dying that way," the bereaved pet owner said Wednesday.
Stoll, a longtime resident of Martha's Vineyard, shared her sad story with friends and neighbors on the summer resort island in an obituary for Emily published in The Vineyard Gazette.
Two weeks ago, about 15 mourners held a vegetarian "pignic" in memory of Emily, who met her maker after a change of hands at the farm where she was boarded until last month.
"Everywhere I go, people give condolences," Stoll said.
Emily was a well-loved fixture known to many as Stoll's pride and joy, but "for 10 cents a pound the man who took her to auction chose to overlook who she was."
She was a good pig, a gentle pig. Emily liked strawberries, leftovers from Fat Tony's restaurant, rolling around on her tummy and grunting along to favorite songs.
But for all her talents, in the end Emily was just a pig like any other in the eyes of her new caretaker. "He telephoned out of state to ask the old [farm] owner, who said, `The pig belongs to the farm. Do what you want.' And he did," wrote Stoll.
The farm manager hired a man to haul Emily to auction in Seekonk, where she was eventually sold to Jimmy Dean, the sausage company owned by the country and western singer.
"It stinks," Stoll said. She never thought things would end this way when Emily grew to 400 pounds - too big for Stoll's back yard.
Emily's first adoptive home was with Steve Morgan, who boarded Emily with his pig, Helen. "I arranged to pay for the corn and Steve took on the `slop' detail," wrote Stoll. "Emily became a social sow as people went out of their way to visit `the girls' and of course, to feed them."
But those golden days came all too quickly to an end. Steve Morgan moved away and Stoll found the pig a new farm, the last home she would know.
"Life seemed sweet for Em," Stoll remembered. "Until . . . I found her gate open and her pen empty."
Stoll said she didn't believe the farm manager and others implicated in Emily's death acted out of malice. It was something worse, she said.
"After much investigation, the culprits seem to be apathy, greed and ultimately, cruelty," wrote Stoll, who did not identify the owners.
"How could such a thing happen, especially in this wonderful, safe place we call Martha's Vineyard?"
by CNB