It was a warm and pleasant summer day when Gene, your average farm pig--fat, lazy, pink, but oh so loveable--was grazing in his favorite field.  He had been let out that day so he could get a little bit of exercise.  It had been about an hour and Gene was getting kind of bored.  His friends were all sleeping so he decided to wander to the edge of the field, which bordered a thick forest.  The pigs were all protected from venturing into the forest by a large wooden fence that must have been there for decades.  Gene slowly walked along and was enjoying the view.  He saw several patches of wild mushrooms which made him drool, for Gene's favorite food was mushrooms.  He really wanted those mushrooms but sadly he could not get past the fence.  He shrugged it off and continued walking. 
            The sun had begun setting by now but Gene was enjoying his walk far too much to turn back.  Gene then saw something he'd never seen before.  He quickly approached and it was definitely what he thought it was: a hole in the fence!  A rock had somehow smashed the fence and created a gap big enough for Gene to fit through.  He remembered those mushrooms and got very excited.  They were quite a ways back, farther than he remembered, but he didn't care.  He ate them all but wasn't satisfied.  He began to venture deeper into the woods in search of more mushrooms.  Occasionally he would find a few, but nothing enough to satisfy him.
              It was getting very dark now and Gene realized he didn't know which way the fence was.  This made him very scared.  He had never been on his own before and being alone in a dark forest was not a pleasant thought.  He began to walk back in the direction he thought was the right way, but after many hours of walking, he finally gave up.  Gene was lost.  He decided that it was best that he just went to sleep and would try again in the morning. 
            Morning came and Gene was refreshed and ready to go.  He remembered which way he was walking last night so he started to walk back the same way.  He soon realized he was hungry.  Now, Gene wasn't a very smart pig.  He had a good heart, but his intellect failed him from time to time.  He began to venture in another direction because he thought he smelled mushrooms. He walked for a little while and finally came upon a huge patch of mushrooms--bigger than he had ever seen! He was so excited that he nearly didn't see the bear that was also interested in the very same mushrooms.  Gene squealed!  The bear looked at him with a look that would have peeled the skin off of lamp post, that is, if there was a lamp post in the area and lamp posts had skin.  Gene began to run as fast as he could.  The bear weighed the benefits of his situation:  He could either A) eat the mushrooms which would satisfy him for a good hour or so or B) give up his herbivore lifestyle and eat Gene, one tasty looking pig.  The bear decided that option B was most appealing at the time so the bear gave chase. 
            The chase was an incredible display of speed, cunning, maneuvering, and luck.  Gene weaved through trees, jumped over rocks, ran through hollowed tree trunks, and did everything his small little pig brain could think of, but that bear was relentless. Gene was beginning to get tired and he knew the bear would catch up to him soon if he slowed down.  Gene got lucky.  He heard the sound of a river not far off in the distance.  He knew that if he could get to the river, he would be able to escape the clutches of the bear.  He got a second wind and made it there. However, there was a problem; the river was down a cliff and He would have to jump to get to it.  He turned around and saw the bear.  Gene had no other options and so he jumped.  The bear saw this jump, and gave a long, heartfelt sigh. He decided that it wasn't worth it after all to eat innocent creatures and took a large bite out of a fern.  The fern just happened to be a magical fern, though, and let out a scream that traumatized the bear.
            Gene had a smile on his face as he plummeted through the air on his way to an adventure with wetness. His smile quickly went away as he plunged into the icy cold waters.  Gene was not well trained in swimming and the fast current of the river took him quite a ways downstream before he could make it to the shore.  He shook off the cold water from his hide and took a moment to reflect.  Here he was, alone, lost, wet, with no idea where to go. As time passed he kept getting more and more lost. He came to the conclusion that he would never find his way home.  He began to cry.  He would miss his friends so very much.  Gene began to aimlessly wander and realized he was still hungry so he decided to find whatever he could to eat.  Nothing he found tasted very good, but at least he wouldn’t starve.
             For the next few days, nothing very exciting happened. Gene simply stayed alive.  He didn’t really journey much.  It was on about day five that Gene noticed that he felt a little different.  He felt like he was getting angry, like a rage was building up in him that he couldn’t control.  Gene didn’t know this, because he is just a simple pig, but he was beginning to transform into a wild boar.  Pigs that are left alone in the wild for too long begin to develop traits that make them go crazy.  Gene did a simple psychoanalysis of himself and determined his rage was just a factor in coping with his new reality.  He got angry at farmer Hobbert for not watching him. He got mad at his friends for sleeping. He even got mad once and thought he could take on the bear that chased him. 
            Several more days passed and the transformation continued.  Gene was now covered completely in dark brown hair.  He was no longer the cute little pink pig he once was.  He even had a longer nose now—and tusks!  Gene’s mind was so clouded that he completely forgot about his past life.  Hunger consumed him and he ate nearly everything in his path: nuts, roots, grass, bugs, and of course: mushrooms. 
            Meanwhile, farmer Hobbert was growing tired of his hunt for Gene.  He had started searching for Gene the day after Gene went missing.  He found the hole in the fence and knew this is how Gene escaped.  He cursed himself for allowing this to happen.  Farmer Hobbert had dedicated many hours to his search—he found many patches of mushrooms that had been freshly eaten, he found pig droppings, and he found a strange fern that almost seemed to be sobbing, but nothing led him any closer to Gene.  Farmer Hobbert finally gave up his search because he knew what had become of Gene.  Gene was lost now and would likely never return to his innocent pig self again.
            Gene was perfectly okay with never returning to his old pig self.  He had so much more energy now.  He was stronger.  He could run faster.  He even learned how to swim with ease.  One day, while he was playing in the mud, he heard a noise.  It sounded like something broke a branch by a nearby bush.  Gene was fearless now, so he decided to go investigate.  As he approached the bush he saw it rustle a bit and then he saw what had caused the noise.  A human!  The human pointed a gun at Gene and fired, but luckily, the shot just barely missed.  Gene ran faster than he ever had.  He ran to the river and swam across it and kept running.  He ran so far that he again found himself lost—for he had made a home for himself in the forest, but now his home was nowhere to be found.  He finally slowed down and took a break.  He was pretty tired and quickly fell asleep.
             Gene had a strange dream that didn’t make much sense to him. In his dream he saw a long wooden fence that surrounded a large field.  It comforted him but he didn’t understand why.  He woke up and began to walk around.  To his surprise, he found himself next to a fence that looked identical to the fence in his dream.  Gene walked along the fence for quite some time.  He passed a part of the fence that looked newer than the rest of the fence (he didn’t know that it had recently been patched up by farmer Hobbert).  After a while the fence led Gene to the greatest thing he’d ever seen.  Endless patches of lettuce, cabbage, radish, carrots, and countless other scrumptious looking foods were on the other side of the fence, just beyond his reach. Gene started to dig with his tusks, for he had become quite hungry once again.  He finally managed to squeeze through the small hole he had made.
             It was pure bliss.  Gene began ravishing through the vegetables like a demented horse with a thirst for blood…and carrots.  Gene ate until he was stuffed and started walking back to the fence, but just moments before he got there a trap ensnared his leg.  Gene squealed and furiously tried to escape, but nothing he did helped.  Just then, farmer Hobbert came running up.  Gene tried to bite him, for he didn’t recognize his keeper.  Farmer Hobbert snickered to himself; he had placed the trap there as a last resort to find Gene and it had worked.  Gene was very scared, but still enraged.  Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his back and the lights went black.
            Gene woke up from his tranquilizer induced slumber in a very small pen inside a barn.  He was alone with exception to the small trough of food and water to his immediate left. He began to run around in circles but eventually tired himself out and fell asleep again.
             Days passed.  Gene would occasionally see other animals through an opening in the barn doors, but he never got any visitors other than the brief visits from farmer Hobbert to refill his food and water.  It was a lonely experience, but Gene noticed that he wasn’t as angry as he used to be. 
            About a week passed and Gene was woken up from a very pleasant nap (where he dreamt about mushrooms and bears and cliff diving) by the sound of buzzing and a funny tickle on his head.  His hair was being shaved by farmer Hobbert!  Gene tried to run but realized he couldn’t move because he was tied down.  The experience was actually quite pleasant, he soon realized.  The razor massaged his sleek piggy body that had become quite tense through his recent journey.   Farmer Hobbert finally finished and left Gene (who had a smile on his face).
            More weeks passed and Gene had slowly transformed back to his old self.  His tusks had retracted and his snout had returned back to its normal stature.  He even had a bit of a belly now that he consistently had a source of food.  After a month of being in the barn, Gene was finally let out. All his old friends came out to play with him in the field and they had a wonderful day of rolling in the mud, snorting, and doing what pigs do best: eating. 
            Farmer Hobbert looked out at the pigs with a tear in his eye.
“What a journey that pig has been through; I almost feel bad that we’ll have to eat him next month,” he said with a sigh.