This is a short article from the pen of the great Hungarian writer. Short, but instructive. His message is perhaps more valid today than ever.
You know, I was a poor boy, and when I was a child, my mother sent me to the village as a pig herder. They are laughing now, even though everyone can raise their hat to the pigs. Do you know what well-intentioned, honest animals they are?
For three years I went out to pasture, from spring to autumn. I got to know them. They are loyal, honest. Do you understand? They loved me! I wasn't even a pig, just a human...
He swallowed and stared at the floor in front of him for a moment.
Then he continued:
One fall, they sent me up to the mountains to do a spotting. It happened then that wolves started to avoid the konda.
Among the animals entrusted to me, there was one that always walked separately from the others. A mangy, skinny little pig. The others did not tolerate him among them, because he was literally pissing under you. Because the pig is a very clean animal, do you know, it will get rid of this kind of thing on its own. This roast was the shame of Konda. And that's exactly what the wolves went for.
It happened in the morning, just after dawn. I had just herded the animals out of the pen and sleepily leaned my back against a beech tree when I heard the screeching. The little mangy pig wandered a bit further away from the others and was scouted by the wolves. Four attacked him at once. But when I raised my head to shout, all the pigs had their heads up and the next moment the whole herd collapsed and ran towards the wolves like a huge black cylinder.
Just imagine two hundred or so pigs, crowded together, running with raised snouts, blowing and chattering their teeth! The wolves were chased away in the blink of an eye, and the little scabby pig was unharmed apart from a few bites. And I thought a lot at the time about why the pack protected this one, whom it had already rejected from among itself and whom it never accepted back.
But I only realized it now: because it was also a pig.
You see, that's why I want to be a pig. Because I envy pigs the solidarity that my herd of humans lacks. We preach doctrines and pile slogans upon slogans, but in the meantime everyone only cares about himself, let alone moving a little finger for anyone else.
If back then, in the forest, my herd of pigs behaved like human society does today: the wolves could have devoured the whole herd.
Just as people are also devoured by evil and selfishness.
Wass Albert
(Header image: Horkai animal training center)
