It Seemed Like A Good Idea,

at the time,

photograph Petpiggies/Daily Express, in 2018, Zhang Li, a young woman living in Shanghai, decided to get a pet animal for company. She wasn’t really a cat or dog person, so she started looking for an alternative, and thought she had found it when she saw an advertisement for a micro-pig, which according to the American Miniature Pig Association (AMPA), miniature pigs’ heights can vary from 36 cm to 50 cm (14 inch – 20 inch) at the shoulder with weights ranging from 23 – 68 kg, so far so good,

it didn’t take long for Zhang Li to notice that the small piglet she bought kept growing past the size micro-pigs are supposed to be, but by that time, both she and her family and friends had grown attached to it, so she couldn’t bring herself to give it up,

Zhang Li often takes her pet pig out for walks, and gets strange looks from passers-by, who sometimes stop to take photos with it, the so-called micro pig turned out to be a Bama Xiangzhu, a breed of pig bred for its delicious, tender meat. They have short legs, thin skin and a healthy appetite. They don’t really like exercise, though, so they tend to get very fat; Zhang’s pet, for example, is about 150-cm-long, and weighs over 150 kilograms. It eats 5 to 6 times a day, crickey, I hope it is housetrained!

still, Zhang loves her pet “micro-pig”, and wouldn’t part with it for anything or anyone, telling Chinese media that if she ever gets married, the pig will definitely be part of the family, as it happens this sort of scam with large growing micro-pigs is not at all uncommon, a couple of years ago The Guardian published a piece on the subject, documenting multiple cases of people who bought micro-pigs that proved to be anything but micro, and no, I am not going to do the 'bringing home the bacon' joke!