Original oil painting on cradled wood panel with sawtooth hanger 
12 x 12 in / 30.5 x 30.5 cm
Varnished, Unframed

The captain sent me in first on the inflatable — my job was to distract the pigs so they wouldn't pop the boat when they smelled the fruit scraps. I was a roller derby skater. I could handle a pig. I scrambled over the edge into the crystal clear shallows, ziplock bag in hand, and she came straight for me before I'd even found my footing. So I did what you do with a dog — I asked her to sit. She knew the hand signal. She sat, obedient and enormous, right there in the surf. Then she went for the bag just as I was falling backwards over some rocks, and she got my stomach. My boyfriend was convinced my derby teammates were going to make him pay for letting me get eaten by wildlife.

She wasn't doing anything wrong. She was just hungry, and people had been showing up with bags of food her whole life. I wanted to give her back some grace.