Mermaid Tales: Pigs and Piglets

Been a while since I told y’all a Mermaid Tale. Today, I thought I’d tell you about Ralph the Swimming Pig.

Google Aquarena Springs and odds are a picture of or story about Ralph the Swimming Pig will pop up. He’s even been on TV. Now, when I say “he,” I don’t mean he as in one pig. There were lots of Ralphs over the years. There were always two on the grounds at all times. If you were a visitor and you visited Ralph in his home, you saw Ralph. There was another Ralph hidden away in another home behind the one on display. We called one Ralph and the other one…Ralph. Why two Ralphs? Because the pigs were not allowed to swim two shows in a row. It was in their star contract. Mermaids and Glurpos (more about Glurpos in a future post) had no such clause.

Did Ralph do synchronized ballet? No. Did he eat an underwater picnic? No. Did he blow air rings? Nah. Did he actually swim? Yes.

Each year, we’d get a new batch of possible Ralphs. Little baby Ralphs that we kept in the girls’ dressing room in a big box with towels for them to lay on.

In case you’re wondering, baby pigs are soooo cute. They really are. Little white piglets with pink snouts. They’re so adorable, you just want to pick them up and hug them. ‘Course when you do, you learn they are also hard as rocks. They are not soft and cuddly. But they are cute. To this day, I still love baby pigs.

Why did we get them as piglets? Because they have to be trained to swim. Training takes a while since they’re not exactly natural water lovers. You start when they’re little and get them into the water, holding them with one hand to help them float and learn to use their legs and feet (paws, hoofs, whatever) to swim. You entice them with a baby bottle of liquid piglet food. You keep working with them until you no longer have to hold them up. You just show them the bottle and they’ll swim wherever you lead them. And they get bigger. And bigger.

When they’re quite big, you teach them to dive. Okay, dive is a wishy-washy term. Ralph didn’t dive like the human divers who climbed to the top of the volcano and dove as the submarine was sinking. Ralph would be led through the volcano out to the water-level platform by, usually, a Glurpo. One of the mermaids would be in the water with a bottle. She’d hold up the bottle and Ralph would leap into the show tank and follow her. She’d make a couple of turns around the tank then lead Ralph out of view of the submarine to the shallow area where Ralph would walk out on the shore, be put back into his comfy home to get big pig food, oink at kids coming by to look at him, and wait until it was his turn to be in a show and get the yummy bottle food. All in all, Ralph had a pretty cushy life.

Eventually, he’d get too big or old and be retired and a new Ralph would take his place. When Ralph retired, he moved to a beautiful farm with lots of mud, green grass, water so he could relive his glory days, and tons of corn on the cob desserts.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Hey! It’s what we were told.

(Before you ask, that’s not me in the picture with Ralph.)

Am I the only one who thinks piglets are cute?