Getting food for the new baby.
Chapter 6: Homecoming
Setting: In the hospital. Three days after the birth. Kermit and Piggy will soon be taking their little tax deduction home. But before they do that they will be meeting with the hospital pediatrician to discuss the care and feeding of mamal-amphibian hybrids.
“Well, what do you think, Dr. Strangepork, can we take him home soon?” said Piggy.
“Well assuming that it is a he, and assuming that all goes well all three of you could be discharged tomorrow. Just one thing, how do you plan on feeding the little one?” said Dr. Strangepork.
“I was going to ask you that,” said Piggy, “the little guy obviously can’t nurse in that fish tank, and yet my breasts are more than full, but I’m imagining he or she might need something more.”
“You are correct about that,” said Dr. Strangepork. “The tadpole stage of frogs is a time when they need a generous supply of algae or pond scum. Also, since your little one is part pig you will need to feed it pig swill. What I suggest is that you fill this 5 gallon fish tank with four gallons of water then add a mixture of half a gallon of pond scum with a half a gallon of pig swill, plus a little bit of breast milk. Change the water about once a week, and add a new mixture at the same time, and you should be okay.
“Where would I get all this stuff?” asked Piggy.
“Well, according to a parent of one of my older patients, there’s a farm in Great Neck Queens known as Green Meadows Farm, a lot of school groups do field trips there, they raise pigs, so you could probably get the swill there. As for the pond scum, the pond in Central Park has a generous supply of it, just be careful not to get any fish or other tadpoles in the bottle. As for the breast milk, you already have that, and there’s a place in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn managed by an English immigrant named Sir Didymus that sells breast pumps designed for pigs.
“Well, I am most certainly not going outside of Manhattan. I do have a reputation to uphold.” said Piggy.
“I can get the pig swill for you,” said Kermit, “Back when I lived on Sesame Street I occasionally reported on school field trips to that farm. There’s also another one right next door called The Queens County Farm Museum.”
“Thank you, honey, you know, on second thought I don’t much like the idea of rooting around in some pond for scum either, do you mind…”
“I’ll get the scum too,” said Kermit. “It’ll give me a chance to visit some of my relatives.” he turned to Dr. Strangepork, “Do you have the address of that place in Brooklyn, I think that might be her next request,”
“Certainly,” said Dr. Strangepork, “Although, I think those sounded more like demands than requests.” he wrote down the address on a piece of prescription paper. “And might I suggest that you get everything today while Piggy is resting, that way she can feed the baby as soon as she wakes up and you will have enough to last you through your first week at home.”
Kermit looked at his wallet, “Well at least the pig swill probably won’t cost too much, and the pond scum will probably be free. Let’s see, I’ll take the subway up to Central Park, get the scum, then hop back on the train to Queens, grab the LIRR out to the farm at the edge of Queens, and then head to Brooklyn for the breast pump. Considering that it is now 8:30 A.M. I should be back here by about 5:00 P.M. Can the little guy hold out till then?”
“Actually no,” said Dr. Strangepork, “but don’t worry, if you check kin at the nursery before you leave, you will notice that the hospital was stocked with a fairly decent supply of the first two ingredients in anticipation of your arrival. We also have a breast pump on hand here, and at about 10:30 we will be wheeling the tank in so that Piggy can supply the third ingredient she will pump herself into a jar on the pump and we will dump what we acquire from her into the tank.”
“Thank you, I’ll do that,” said Kermit.
Later at the nursery, Kermit walked along a bunch of ordinary looking frog tadpoles in fish tanks until he came to strange looking ones. One had a human-looking nose and probably belonged to that girl whose mother he had met at the furniture store. The other had a pig shaped snout and was obviously his. He looked over at human-frog hybrid and wondered if it would inherit the blue skin and poison glands of his South American cousin. He then checked out his little one and wondered it it would hold onto that curly tail when it passed through the metamorphosis stage. He fingered his own collar. Family legend had it that a distant ancestor of his had mated with a frilled lizard and that’s how the collar wound up in his family, gradually through repeated generations of frog-frog crossings the collar gene had all but disappeared until now when it showed up in him. He wondered what other pig traits would appear in this child and how many generations they would last, of course if the final result shared his desire for cross-species experimentation the pig traits might stay in longer plus also a few other odd genes might get picked up as well. He told the nurse he’d be back in the afternoon and headed out of the nursery and down to the elevator.