Auntie Jane's Pet Pig

Auntie Jane lived in Kaupo. I hope she still does. Her husband and son worked at the Kaupo Ranch. She drove down to the Kaupo road each afternoon to sale her home made ice cream and lunches to tourist from her Lunch Wagon.

I had moved from Maui in 1999 after having lived there since 1982. For the last several years before I moved I owned a motorcycle of which I rode out around Hana and Kaupo weekly. It was my get away for a day. No phones. I would leave early, just after 7 and take the whole day, just for myself. Drop down from Haiku to the Hana Hwy and roll out toward Hana. Usually before any road traffic to speak of.

Sunny rainy, it did not make any difference unless it was really a storm, I was off on my bike. Just me.

There are so many places around the back side of Hana that are of another world. I can’t go into them here as to do so would take a life time and if you really want to know about them, Please do them for yourself.

But this story is all about Auntie Janes Pet Pig.

Geeez!

I do not know if it was the first time I saw the picture or not but it certainly would get your attention. Not that it was any sorta picture that was large. It must have been taken with a Kodak Instamatic or the like. Just a 4 by 4. But it was there scotch taped to the inside of the window on her Lunch Wagon where you would place your order: pork burger, coffee and her home made ice cream. The photograph was of her standing out in the grass –probably her lawn and next to her was this animal. This very healthy wild boar as I told you. It’s back up to her waist. But it was not how tall it stood off the ground. It was the size of this animals head and its husks that literally grabbed all of your attention. You would almost stop looking at this photograph and it would suddenly dawn on you that the person in the picture was Jane and she was in the lunch wagon fixin your food and you were standing in the yard, a similar yard as in the picture and you would start to wonder, ‘Juz were is dis animal?’ Here about?

“Hey Jane! I have a question. Where is this boar that is in the picture with you?”

“Well, that is an interesting story. I ‘ll share it with you while we eat.”

“I’d like to hear about it. He isn’t going to join us is he?”

She’d laugh.

‘Well, is he?’

“Don’t worry!”

Yeah, well, ‘Don’t worry’, in Hawaiian meant, ‘keep your eyes open!’

I’d look around the yard for any tail tail signs.

Jane would call out and say, ‘Well here ya go.’ She’d set your meal in front of you on the table and sit down across from you with her cup of coffee. The mountain above us and the breathtaking Kaupo Gap.

‘So you were going to tell me about that boar.”

“Oh yeah! Well, my husband and son hunt and they would go out at dusk and wait for boars to come out of the bush at dusk. They shot that boar’s Mom that you see in the picture. When they went over to pick it up they discovered that she had a keiki with her. The one that you see in that picture. Well they couldn’t just leave it there. So they put it in the back of their pickup and drove home with it. I raised it. As it grew up it had a fondness to me like a baby to its Mom. It became my pet. But it also became kind of a custodian for me as well. It would have nothing to do with my husband or son. So we kept it in a pin. My husband and son would go off to work the ranch in the morning and I might go out and do the laundry or some gardening and let the boar out. He would grub around the yard.

Well he got as big as you see in that picture. I feed him well.

One day my husband and son left and I was out hanging laundry in the back of the house. The boar was out in the yard. My husband had come back to the house for something that he forgot. He walked through the gate toward the house and suddenly stopped head in his tracks.

The boar had him in his sights. My husband had two choices. The front door of our house or over the fence. He choose the front window. He came out the front door with one of his guns. That was the end of my pet pig.”

“Wow”

“How do you like him? Is he good?”