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Pig in a Pig
Melvin Peebles made a midline incision through the ventral body wall of his
fetal pig. He extended the cut into the thoracic cavity then spread the
lateral surfaces apart to expose the inner organs. He looked inside and
tried to match them to the illustration in his lab manual, but instead, he
found another fetal pig. It was wearing the outer pig like a body suit. He
called his teacher over. "Mister Stickney, look at this."
Mister Stickney adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. They were
for reading, and most of the time he just looked over the top of the lenses.
He had a Picasso nose that was squashed flat on his face from a bicycling
accident, so he had to adjust them often. "Hmm," he said. "Pig in a pig."
"Have you seen that before?" asked Marvin.
"No," said Mister Stickney. "But that doesn't mean it can't happen.
There's a first time for everything. Open the second pig."
Melvin continued dissecting, while Mister Stickney watched and took pictures
with his camera phone. "I suspect you'll find at least one more, perhaps
five or seven, a prime number, stopping short of thirteen to avoid
triskaidekaphobia."
All in all, there were five fetal pigs, each nested inside another, which
confirmed Mister Stickney's hypothesis, but did not subject it to a test of
falsifiability, so it was still one of his nonsensical ramblings. He
gloated.
The final pig was empty, except for a laminated miniature copy of the
Declaration of Independence.
"Come here, class," called Mister Stickney. "Look at this pig. It has a
strange affliction that I'm going to call Russian Doll syndrome. I don't
think anyone else has ever seen it before."
"I seen it," said Daisy Oats.
"You mean you saw it," said Mister Stickney.
"That's what I mean," said Daisy. "My pig is the same."
"Did you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence in yours?" asked
Melvin.
"Nope, it had this thing." She laid a metal device on the lab bench.
"That's a roller skate key," said Mister Stickney.
"What's a roller skate?" asked Daisy.
"It's like an in-line skate, but with the wheels on the side. Does anyone
else have a pig with Russian Doll syndrome?" No, all of the other pigs were
filled with guts, like the manual showed. Mister Stickney called the
newspaper.
The Hooterville Gazette sent a reporter and a photographer and the story was
on the front page the next day. The television station manager read it and
sent a cameraman and Julie Bigguns to interview Melvin, Mister Stickney and
Daisy. Herman Mott, a farmer out in the county, recorded it off the TV and
posted it on You Tube. It went viral. Mister Stickney and the amateur
scientists were invited to speak at an International Conference in
Stockholm. None of them spoke Swedish, so their speech had to be
translated.
Soon, fetal pigs with Russian Doll syndrome began turning up all over the
globe. Researchers at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta isolated
the agent that caused the disease. It was a virus that previously affected
onions only. It originated on a farm that was owned by the family of
Elviney Peters in Floyd County, Virginia since the Revolutionary War. Like
most people in those parts, she had a Cherokee Indian in her ancestry.
Unlike most she fed her mixed breed brood sow onions. The virus transferred
the onion gene responsible for concentric layering of onion roots to the pig
genome. That explained the nested pigskins. Nobody ever explained the
Declaration of Independence or the roller skate key.
John A. Ward was born on Staten
Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem to
Leatherneck magazine, and became a scientist. He is now in San Antonio
running, writing and living with his dance partner. Links to his work can
be found at Booger Jack.
Email: John A. Ward
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