[Gpdd] RAINBOW BRIDGE Mayflower Piggyfriend (long)

[Penny Charlesworth]

We are all very sad here at Piggyfriends as we lost our dear Mayflower on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday night she was happily clearing up the last of the veggies but on Thursday morning, she was in distress. She would not eat and seemed in discomfort so I rushed her to our Rodentologists. It seemed at first as though she had some kind of kidney problem. They gave her fluids and pain meds and said that she should stay with them. Much as I hated to leave her there, I knew that she would be in the most capable hands.

I hoped for a miracle but I had used up my quota nursing Cadbury back to health following a severe respiratory illness and early the next morning I had a call from Cavies' Castle with the worst possible news. Mayflower had passed away during the night. Our wonderful Rodentologists had stayed up all night with her and tried everything possible but to no avail. Some kind of blockage had proved impervious to all their medication and expertise. 

I went to collect her later that day. They told me about what they call a design fault in piggies, whereby a sudden movement can cause gastric torsion. They have seen it happen in young piggies when popcorning and once lost one of their own herd in just such a way.

I was upset not to have been with Mayflower when she left for the bridge but am comforted that she was with people she knew and loved and who cared for her as if she were their own.

Many of you will know Mayflower's story as she was one of the April piggies on the GPDD calendar, so I won't tell it all again. She came here in 2003, in utero with her mother Ginger and her two baby girls, who had been born in a garden in the cold of an English winter and had somehow survived. Ginger, a first time mother at the age of five, was pregnant again with Mayflower and her sister Gingerbread and when they were born, I thought that I would lose them as they were such tiny, wobbly runts and poor Ginger had no milk. They beat the odds and grew into plump, happy piggies. Mayflower was born with one eye closed but this opened spontaneously after a week.

All of the "Ginger Girls" have been great ambassadors for piggykind as any visitor wanting to "pick up a piggy" has been offered one of them to hold ( under supervision ). All five of them are/were easy going piggies, eager for a cuddle and never wriggly. 

The "Ginger Girls" have occupied a large corner pen at Piggyfriends for the last five years, the remaining three celebrating Mayflower and Gingerbread's fifth birthdays on May 1st. It is hard to believe that Mayflower has gone. I am so used to nursing piggies through illnesses that when one leaves so suddenly and unexpectedly it is much more of a shock. Now there are only two Ginger Girls left, Gingerbread and her older sister, Diamond.

When I went to fetch Mayflower home, two boars were at Cavies' Castle waiting for a home. They had been taken there to be boarded when their slave was rushed to hospital but sadly, she is now in a hospice and these piggies need a new home. If they had been sows, I'm sure that they would have come home with me to share the "Ginger" pen but I haven't room for any more boars right now.

I have buried Mayflower in the herb garden, where I had just cleared last year's parsley crop and will make a sign to put over her as I have done for all the Piggyfriends past and our flag is at half mast.

I tried to post this on Thursday but read Sarah's emotive poems and couldn't finish it. Thank you for sharing them with us Sarah. I have saved them to read again when it doesn't hurt so much.

Thanks also to Janneke, whose funny story about Suus and Dunya cheered us all immensely. It reminded us of the fun we had writing the PigOlympig stories, in which Mayflower and Gingerbread, together with Daisy, accompanied Jan the Boar.

I knew that this could be a difficult year as many of the Piggyfriends are over 5 now. I'm just grateful that Mayflower had the chance of a long and happy life here with her family. She will be missed as they all are. They are never with us for long enough.

R.I.P. Mayflower, reunited with mother Ginger and sister Peridot.

Penny and the sad Piggyfriends.