Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Poor little piggy

On the Reuters website, there is an Oddly Enough section reserved for off-beat news stories and for want of more interesting stories they've been running this story for nearly 2 weeks now. It may not dictate the future of world politics but it sure is amusing.

Kabul Zoo has a single pig on exhibit, a gift from China it seems. "Khanzir" is his name, Pashto for pig. A pig is a rare sight in Muslim countries as consumption of pig meat is forbidden in Islam. According to Islam, a pig is the most dirtiest of God's creatures and even though the poor fellow is imprisoned for public viewing, visitors to the zoo turn their faces away from the enclosure of this most 'haraam' of animals. To top all of this, the zoo authorities put the creature away into a small cell for 2 months as protection for visitors against swine flu before someone finally told the authorities that it was a human-to-human transmitted disease and not in any way to be contracted from a pig! And the pig being a pig survived all this mistreatment and oinked his way back to his cage when he was released as if those past couple of months were nothing at all. His return was via an enthusiastic run through a crowd of unsuspecting zoo visitors who didn't take too kindly to being ambushed by a homesick pig. Whether folks wanted to look at him or not, Khanzir was back in his domain grunting and groaning his way through mud and slush, living life piggy style.

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