Cucumber Pigs

My grandson, Caleb, came to spend the evening with me yesterday.  About 30 minutes after his arrival, he announced, "I have a great idea.  Let's go to Nanny and Pop-Pop's."  It so happened that I had already planned a trip to Nanny and Pop-Pop's to deliver some things I'd picked up earlier in the day, but I was shelling butterpeas at that moment, and needed to start the supper cooking, so I put him off for a while.  When his Poppy had come home, and we'd all eaten dinner, we headed across the road to Nanny's.

While we were there, I made a quick sashay through the garden to check on things.  On my way past the cucumbers, I found two big yellow ones.  Finding them gave me a flashback to my childhood, when my grandfather showed me how to make a pig out of a big yellow cucumber and a few spent kitchen matches.  I told The Husband, "I'm going to show Caleb how to make a cucumber pig."

Caleb was at that moment zooming around the yard in his Power Wheels Jeep.  I snapped a branch off of a cherry tree, and when Caleb zoomed past me, I hollered, "Caleb, come watch; I'm going to turn this cucumber into a pig!" 

He stopped and gave me a disbelieving look.  "Pigs are not made out of cucumbers," he said.  "They're made out of meat."

"This one's going to be made out of cucumber," I told him.  "Come look." 

He climbed out of the Jeep and followed me onto Nanny's back porch.  I sat down at the table and broke off four equal lengths of the cherry branch to use as legs, another length for a tail, and some short pieces for eyes.  Caleb stood at my knees, watching as I poked the sticks into the cucumber.  "He needs a nose," Caleb said.  I broke off another piece of the branch to make the nose. 

"There!" I said, setting the pig onto the table.  It immediatly collapsed onto its belly, with all four legs splayed out to its sides.  My sticks were too thin to hold its weight. 

"It looks like an insect," Caleb observed. 

I broke off two more pieces of stick and jabbed them in.  "Ok, now it's an insect," I said.

Caleb looked skeptical.  "What kind of insect has a tail?"

He had me there. 

Fortunately, Poppy had witnessed the pig's collapse and had already gone for sturdier sticks.  With them and the second yellow cucumber, we fashioned a fine (if slightly disproportioned and rather startled-looking) pig that could hold its own weight.