Audrey Thibert
A little pig looking up at the camera.
Rudi looks up at a passerby from his west-side home.
Last summer I was walking my dog, Maple, on the Southwest Bike Path, a couple blocks from our home. She stopped and got low to the ground, like she does when she feels threatened and wants to make herself look smaller and more fierce (she succeeds on the first count). I looked around for what was bothering her and that's how I met Rudi.
Rudi is a pig. He lives with his owners on Norwood Place, which backs up on the bike path. Paula Niedenthal built him an enclosure in her garden complete with a tidy little pighouse. It's a swine place. Niedenthal even puts healthy (it's the west side, people) treats out for kids to toss to Rudi. The sign next to the bowl reads, "One per customer."
The whole thing's just kind of nice in a quirky sort of way that you'd actually expect on another side of town. It's a little bit of east side bohemian over here amid all the more straight-laced liberals. It's a touch of tie dye in the land of Banana Republic.
I have to admit that, given one of my previous occupations, it occurred to me as Maple and I continued on our walk after meeting Rudi, that maybe the pig wasn't exactly legal. But then I remembered that the ordinances had been amended to allow chickens and then amended again to allow more chickens, so I just figured that more farm animals had been added over the years. I assumed Rudi had been cleared by authorities. I wasn’t sure. I decided not to find out.
Then somebody squealed. An anonymous neighbor of Rudi complained to the city. Turns out pigs are not welcome in these parts after all. The health department responded with an order that Rudi must go soon. If he's not gone he does not become bacon, but Niedenthal gets nailed with a $124 fine and she probably could get slopped with that every day thereafter.
Alders Regina Vidaver and Tag Evers are looking into an ordinance amendment to make an exception for varieties of pet swine. That will take a while, though it shouldn't have to take that long. Back when I was in city government the chickens on the rooftop of the Madison Children's Museum flew the coop, as in, they went over the side and down to the street. I guess they fly well enough because no poultry was hurt in this story. But here's the thing. There were a half dozen chickens on the street and that ran afowl of the law, a maximum of four chickens being allowed in any one place.
Well, the city council had visions of crying school children refusing to eat their chicken tenders fearing it might be Wanda or Rhonda there on their plates and, within a month, an exception was made on their behalf. Seems to me that this could be a similar situation. City government really can act quickly whenever farm animals are in question.
There are no bad guys in this story. City officials are just enforcing the ordinances. The ordinances made sense for a time when people did actually keep lots of farm animals in an urban setting and before anybody thought pigs could be pets. Even the complaining neighbor is doing everybody a favor by forcing us to bring the ordinances up to date with how people (and pigs) live today.
My guess is that by the end of the summer we'll make a proper citizen of Rudi. Then he can just reminisce about the days when he was a page-one, bad ass outlaw pig.
