Three little pigs were born to Daddy Fat Hog, a Rock Star. They grew up on Hog Heaven Estate in the Bel Air hills. When his money ran out, Daddy Fat Hog went to live in an ashram in India and became a spokeshog for Pigghadistra. Meanwhile, the three little Fat Hog triplets spent their days bickering and eating all the food from the enormous pantry. The sheriff came with twenty deputies, shook them down, and kicked them out. The three Fat Hogs were not allowed to keep any possessions, but waddled sadly out a side gate.

They continued down the mile long drive toward the isolated hills of the Platinum Triangle. They passed Daddy’s Safari Outback where the elephants and giraffes nodded good-bye. They gazed mournfully at Daddy’s old Lear Jet with its bent wing and the Rolls Royce up on cinder blocks.

The oldest pig, named Wisp of the Wind, sniffled a bit and snorted good-bye to the giraffes.

The middle pig was named Dorcas. She stopped to eat a few mushrooms.

Salt of the Earth was the youngest triplet, and she called good-bye to the Safari animals cheerfully.

When they reached the main gate, they were each exhausted. Their hooves were hurting. Dorcas knocked into Wisp and pushed him.

“Hey!” Wisp of the Wind protested.

“Ladies, first!” Dorcas insisted. She headed down the road to the right, calling over her shoulder: “And don’t follow me!” She disappeared into the trees.

Wisp of the Wind heaved a big sigh of pique. “I hope I never see her again!” He climbed a tree to see which way was best to take, but he got stuck half way up, and could see nothing for all the leaves. Salt of the Earth shook the tree, and down tumbled Wisp, right onto Salt.

“Uff, thanks, sis. Maybe I’ll see you again some day.” He trotted down the middle path towards farmland because that seemed like the way most likely to have lots of food.

That left Salt of the Earth by herself, wiggling her back to shake off Wisp’s impact. Wisp was not wispy! The most dry, barren way was open to her. She headed down it, discovering that if she pictured fairies dancing in glades and hot springs behind the next curve, her hooves didn’t hurt anymore. She went along cheerfully, hoping her brother and sister were okay. She even spared a kind thought for her dad, Daddy Fat Hog, who had kept them in such luxury her whole life.

Dorcas soon came to a stream with thick muddy banks, and she dove right in, rolling side to side and splashing through the brook in the middle. The cool water and fragrant mud took all her pains away, and she decided to make herself a house of mud. She scooped up the sides until they dried. Then she laced sticks on the top, and stuck mud patties together for a roof. She added a criss-crossing pattern of hoof prints to the interior like wallpaper. Although her house had no door, she was satisfied. She turned around three times and went to sleep.

Wisp of the Wind noticed straw floating on the wind, and a few settled onto his back. He liked the feel, and he detoured into a field of golden straw, enjoying the feel of it scratching the hair on his chinny-chin-chin. He trampled a big spiral, and once he reached the inner circle, he liked how the straw made walls, closing him in. He turned three times in his spiral straw house and went to sleep.

The sun baked Salt of the Earth, but she imagined herself in a desert following clues to buried treasure. After a while, she encountered a bricklayer, sitting sadly by many brick forms, with bricks drying in the sun.

“What’s wrong?” Salt inquired. “You look so sad.”

“I should be happy, since I have the last bricks I need to finish my house here, and they will be dry in an hour. But I no longer want my bricks or my house. I feel caged, and I wish I could go see the world. All my life I have made bricks, and nothing seems important anymore.” His brick house looked mostly finished, and he had a statue of a child in his garden. Even small brick houses in Bel Air were fancy.

“That is so sad,” Salt acknowledged. “I feel the opposite. I want nothing more than a home, and I have to go see the world. If only we could trade.”

“Yeah, I would gladly, I have no gold to pay for my travels. I’m a poor bricklayer, and every last bit of gold went into this house.”

“I could give you my gold!” Salt of the Earth exclaimed. She reached into the fat folds around her neck and extracted a thick, solid gold necklace that the sheriffs had missed. “You take my gold, and I’ll be happy to live in your house. And so they struck a deal, each the happier for trading their advantages to the other. Salt of the Earth listened closely to the bricklayer while he explained how to free the bricks, mix mortar and finish the walls. Then he waved a cheery good-bye. Salt worked all the rest of that day, and by the end, her little brick house, with two windows in each wall and a chimney was done. She even found furniture, pots and pans inside. She turned three times around and fell asleep on the big queen-sized bed.

Meanwhile, the new owner of Daddy Fat Hog’s estate drove his BMW up the long drive. He licked his chops, and grinned enormously. He was Wolfie Insatiatus, the record company executive who had “discovered” Daddy Fat Hog, and made him famous. He had even paid Daddy Fat Hog 15% of the profit from his music, and booked him into countless venues, from big to tiny. His bankruptcy was hardly the fault of the man who had made him and paid him. Wolfie had collected 85% of the profit, and had gone on to “discover” many other musical hogs, all of whom were happy to receive recognition, and didn’t need much payment at all.

Wolfie Insatiatus could have paid the artists only 10% after all. He was generous really, he was the one taking the risks!

Now Wolfie could have bought ten such Bel Air estates, but he enjoyed the idea of living high off the hog here in Hog Heaven, which he had bought for a bargain price, leaving Daddy Fat Hog with nothing after the bank’s costs were paid.

“What use does he have for money on an ashram, anyway?” Wolfie thought to himself with another toothy grin. He flipped his hipster long locks off his forehead, and moved his thin limbs back to the kitchen. To his horror, he found no sausages, no pate, not a single jar of wheat germ or can of tuna. The kitchen and pantry were completely cleaned out!

Wolfie felt a burn as he shifted his shape. In his wolf form, his skinny limbs and long gray hair looked dangerous. He loped up the driveway, and as he did, he caught the scent of young Fat Hog. He ignored the elephants and giraffes, they were too big.

Wolfie reached the gate and headed into the trees.

Soon, he saw the stream and Dorcas’s mud house. Through the open doorway, he saw a savory porky presence. He never forgot his manners, even in his wolf form. He knocked one rock on another three times near the entrance. Dorcas snorted and opened one eye to look sourly at Wolfie.

“I’d recognize those yellow teeth and bad breath anywhere! Wolfie, get lost!” Dorcas grumbled.

“I do not have bad breath!!” Wolfie growled, irritated that he had been recognized and disrespected in his fearsome wolf shape. “Get out here, you didn’t leave any food at Hog Heaven!”

“What are you doing there? The bank owns it now!” Dorcas shrieked. Just the thought of Hog Heaven being gone out of her life forever made her feel desolate.

“I bought it. It’s mine now. Come out of there, so I can eat you up!”

“No way, you creepy loser!” Dorcas scoffed.

“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in.”

“As if!” Dorcas looked proudly around at her lovingly shaped mud walls with their pattern of her hoof prints.

The wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he let out such a noisome wind of horror breath that Dorcas screamed, flailed and crashed through the walls, stomping her little house flat. She took off down a deer path through the woods, over the hill, followed by four raccoon, holding their little fingers over their noses. The wolf was seriously annoyed now, and hungrier than ever. He pursued Dorcas, savoring the fragrant porcine wake she left behind her.

Dorcas soon spied the straw spiral with her brother snoring in the middle of it. She plowed a path straight to it and kicked him awake.

“What are you doing here?!?” Wisp of the Wind was dismayed. “I thought you were gone forever! Get lost!”

“No time for fighting, Wolfie’s on my tail and he’s threatening to eat us up!” Dorcas panted.

“That smarmy user!”

Wolfie knocked three times on a fence post, delighted at the tender scents wafting his way through the straw. “My dear children, come out, come out, or I will blow your house in!”

“Hah!” returned Wisp. “Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!”

The wolf huffed, he puffed, he coughed, and he gasped. Some of the dusty straw was making him wheeze. Dorcas and Wisp broke up laughing. That made Wolfie angrier than ever, and he cleared his throat loudly. He huffed, and he puffed, and he blew for all he was worth.

His terrible breath flattened the straw for miles around. Dorcas and Wisp could not get a breath that wasn’t polluted. They fled down another deer path, gasping for clean air and finding none.

Salt’s sleep was disturbed. Many birds flew into her clearing, cawing and chirping “Pee-yew!!” Their wings flapped strongly and beat the stinky wind down. She rose, stretched and opened her door just in time to see Wisp and Dorcas crash out of the underbrush, coughing and gasping.

They were covered in straw, mud and bird poop.

“Yuck!” Salt was completely grossed out. “What have you been doing? Go drip over by the brick forms, and maybe we can make more bricks with all that gunk!”

Her brother and sister stopped by the brick forms, and Salt sprayed them with the hose, all the while they complained about Wolfie.

“I hear you! Now you’re clean, you can come inside,” sighed Salt. She listened to the whole story, cracking up when her brother recounted his “not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin” defiance. “That Wolfie! He’s a crook! Now we have to act like chickens.”

“Chickens?!” Wisp asked in disbelief.

“You mean lay eggs?!” Dorcas could not believe her ears.

“No, hatch plots!” Salt said, and started whispering. Wisp of the Wind lit the fire and blew it high with his breath. Dorcas lugged the pig iron pot to the chimney. Salt filled it with oil, tarragon and wolfsbane.

Soon, Wolfie knocked at the door of Salt’s brick house. Bang, bang, bang! His knocks were getting louder and more belligerent. “Come out, come out, or I’ll blow your house in!”

With a wink at Wisp, Salt of the Earth replied tauntingly, “Not by the hair of my brother’s chinny-chin-chin!”

“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!” The three Fat Hogs ran around stuffing table linen into all the spaces under doors and around the windows.

“Good luck with that, Wolfie!” sniggered Dorcas loudly. “Hurry, seal the back window,” Dorcas whispered to Wisp.

“I am! I am!” Wisp whispered back. “You’re always telling me what to do!” Salt shushed the two of them.

Wolfie growled, and he dragged in a breath so deep the cicadas stopped singing. Then he blew so hard birds fell from the trees. None of the poisonous breath came into the house, and the brick walls stood firm. Wisp could see grasshoppers, mice and chipmunks running away as fast as little legs could take them. The birds rose screaming in the air in a huge, angry flock and pelted the wolf with guano as they fled the noxious fumes from his fetid lungs.

Wolfie sniffed. As usual, he could not smell his own breath, but he could smell tarragon in oil. How dare those pigs dine well when he was starving! His stomach rumbled. He looked up, and noticed the chimney. He leaned a brick form against the side of the house and scrambled up the slats like a ladder. Soon, he was pitter-pattering across the roof. He looked down into the chimney but could not see a thing in the dark. He eased his skinny bones into the narrow space. Foot hold by foot hold, he descended. Half way, he dislodged a swift nest, and the little birds flew at him with angry faces, pecking around his eyes. He swiped a paw at them, and they flew up and out of the chimney. In the skirmish, he lost his balance and fell, tumbling down into the boiling oil.

Unfortunately for Wolfie, the oil burned all his hair from his body, the shock turned him human again, and the oil went down his throat cauterizing his taste buds, gums, throat and lungs. His breath smelled of tarragon thereafter, and birds followed him everywhere. He began to contemplate his mortality. His itchy bald skin and his invalid’s diet of applesauce and chicken broth soon drove him mad, causing him to leave all his worldly possessions to the three Fat Hogs, who then waddled back to Hog Heaven, bickering and squabbling all the way.

Copyright 2013 Brenda Davis Harsham