Over the weekend, Annie took me to the Puyallup State Fair in Washington. I’m not normally a huge fan of fairs, but I was sucked in with the promise of an elephant ear… and Pig Racing.

Now, I had never heard of pig racing before, but this sounded like something that I couldn’t possibly miss out on. We arrived just as the event was starting, and managed to grab a spot on the grass behind the fence, just a few people back from the front. They had bleachers set up, and a little tiny sawdust race track, complete with miniature versions of the chutes that horses come out of at horse races.

Narrating the entire event was the self-proclaimed “Pig Lady,” complete in a checkered pioneer-style dress, with a bonnet. Her husband (?), dressed only in a pair of overalls and a straw hat, was busy herding the pigs into the chutes.

The Pig Lady explained that they were from Hedrick’s Racing Pigs (which my internet searching reveals to be a slightly less popular version of Robinson’s Racing Pigs, who have appeared on Leno. Neither group seems to be affiliated with pigrace.com).

A pig race, she explained, over the course of the slowest 15 minutes I have ever waited through in my life, as I ate my greasy fair food and got a cramp in my leg, is just like a horse race, but with shorter legs. The pigs have been trained to race to get to a silver platter at the other end of the track that contains a (shudder) “pig” newton.

Finally, after much ado, she pulled the lever and four little pigs ZIPPED around the track. The whole thing was over in approximately 3 seconds, and I think everyone in the crowd was just as disappointed as I was. I’m not sure what I was expecting… rocket packs? armor and weapons? (hmmm… that would be a great game) but it was just pigs running in a circle.

They did three races, each less inspiring than the last, covering three breeds of pigs. The last race was the best, because they brought out four little piglets, and one of the piglets got a little confused and went the wrong way for a second.

So after 15 minutes of annoying yelling from the Pig Lady, we received three minutes of racing, followed by an appeal to visit “our proud sponsors, the Jacuzzi people across the way!”

All in all, I think I can safely say that “country folk” are weird and unnatural, and my way of life, with its complete lack of livestock, is clearly the one true and proper way to live and blah blah blah I’m tired of writing about this, I’ll link to some photos of the place where Annie and I are getting married later on.