Tred's life is rich with outrageous, funny, frightening stories.  We will publish a new "Bedtime Story" every couple of weeks.
As we reviewed pictures for the website it brought to mind some of these special events in his life.  Following is the first story
about his beloved pig, Truffles.
I hope you enjoy them.

Truffles the Wonder Pig

As a young boy growing up, I lived in South Hampton NY, we raised turkeys, sheep, pigs, chickens and lamb which butchered and ate, I found it very wholesome. My dear friend Bob Bellows and I would bring in the winter meat, it was a big part of my life.

I fell in love with a 750 LB pig named Truffles, this relationship totally got out of hand, we talked politics on warm summer nights and I would actually sleep with the pig, and of course we would actually talk politics, Truffles always agreed with me. The concept that pigs are dirty are very very wrong, if you keep them on sand and clean up every day, the animals actually keep themselves very clean.

During my obsession with Truffles, I found a void in her life and supplied a boyfriend “Bowguard” (picture enclosed) They produced 7 piglets that unfortunately we raised and ate.

During my obsession with Truffles, one day I decided to paint her pen in dark British racing green, the paint I found in the garage was Circa 1960, it was the days of arsenic and lead based, I spent hours painting the railings and left no detail to waste. During the painting procedure, my dear friend Jim Hummel called me about news of a hot big eye bite in Atlantis Canyon, I left the paint brush on the railing, when I returned, Truffles had consumed 1 gallon of lead green paint.

I couldn’t believe it, she drank the whole thing, I will swear on my Bible. 10 days later on the absolute dark of the moon, I looked out to Truffles condo and she literally glowed in the dark, like she spent the weekend in Tronoble. She eventually lost all of her hair and had a iridescent glow kind of like a bluegill.

Her spirits were up, I had a blood test taken and the vet told me that they had never seen anything like this and they didn’t even know how to respond. That fall, I harvested Truffles and I believe she was almost 800 lbs. It took almost all day, by this time, her impediment of green paint was known locally. For Christmas, I gave everyone a prime cut of meat, then the calls started coming in, the meat was rank. Some said it even tasted like paint or turpentine, others said it was a weird color. All I can do is apologize to Truffles, however we enhanced each other’s life for years. Oh well, there it is, wait till next week for the next Barta bedtime story.