Every house on Meridian Street had a ceramic pig on the porch. Every single one. White ceramic, approximately thirty centimeters tall, sitting upright with an open mouth. Some were old and cracked. Some looked new. All of them faced the street.
When we moved in, there was no pig on our porch.
The neighbor from two doors down — a retired man named Gerald — came over on the second day to welcome us. He asked, during the conversation, where our pig was. We said we didn't have one. He looked concerned in a way that seemed disproportionate. He said we'd need to get one. He said you feed the pig or the pig gets hungry.
We thought this was either a neighborhood joke or some eccentric local tradition. My wife found a ceramic pig at a thrift store and put it on the porch. Gerald came by, inspected it, and said we needed to feed it. We asked what we fed it. He said anything, a little something each night, enough to keep it from getting hungry.
We put a piece of bread in front of it that night as a joke. It was gone in the morning. We assumed an animal.
We forgot about it for about a week. We didn't put anything out.
On the eighth day, we woke up at 3 AM to a sound from the porch. A low, specific sound — not an animal sound, not wind, not settling. Something rhythmic. My wife described it as chewing.
I turned on the porch light. Nothing on the porch. The pig was in its spot.
But the pig's mouth was slightly wider than it had been.
We started feeding the pig. A piece of fruit, some bread, something small each night. We joked about it but we did it every night. The mouth never widened again.
When we eventually moved, we took the pig with us. We didn't discuss why. We still feed it.
It still empties every night.
We still don't discuss why.