Fred and Pig
- Paulsen's hanging out in a bookstore, looking for a book about fish. He's just chilling.
- A boy comes up to Paulsen. He asks him if he wants to buy a puppy.
- The kid is holding an old detergent box. Inside are a bunch of wood chips. Paulsen doesn't see anything else.
- The kid tells Paulsen to dig out the puppy. Paulsen sticks his hand on. Ouch. Uh-oh, this puppy bites.
- The boy says the dog is half lab and half something that came in the yard one night. LOL.
- The kid's asking fifty bucks for the puppy. What? People give away mutt puppies.
- Paulsen's like, cool, a mutt puppy that bites. I'm sold. He offers the kid five dollars. Sold.
- (The puppy is very cute, to be fair.)
- Paulsen takes the puppy to his truck. On the ride home, he decides to name him Fred, after a friend who recently died.
- At home, Fred raises heck. He pees everywhere and breaks and/or eats everything in sight. He also terrorizes the cat.
- At this point, it behooves us to say: Paulsen must have a very understanding wife.
- As it turns out, Fred's destructive streak never really left him. He was also very persistent. He liked to get a job done.
- In those days, Paulsen and his wife grew their own food. They had a pig (named, aptly enough, Pig) that they were raising for meat.
- Except they never got around to eating Pig, who became a 500-pound pet.
- Fred gets along with Pig because they both like eating so much. He often visits Pig's trough to score a meal.
- Fred and Pig both get fat. They hang out most days and sleep together at night.
- One day, Pig figures out that there's fresh food in the garden. Why settle for scraps? He busts through a fence and chows down on some vegetables.
- Over time, no fence could hold Pig, who was huge. Finally, Paulsen decides to get an electric fence.
- At first the fence works great. Pig can't figure out how to get around it.
- Fred takes on the fence as a personal challenge. Being persistent, he isn't going to give up.
- The fence shocks Fred the first time. He's on his feet again almost immediately, and he's mad at the fence.
- Fred attacks the fence. This doesn't go so well for Fred, but he keeps on trying and keeps getting shocked.
- Paulsen is so worried watching this all go down that he wonders if he'll have to rescue Fred.
- Finally, Fred breaks the new fence. Game over.
- Eventually, Paulsen reconnects it, and Fred gives up. Pig is now contained within the electric fence, far away from the fresh vegetables.
- Fred continues to dig up the garden and eat the best of the vegetables.
- Did we mention that Paulsen's wife must be very understanding?