Irwin could easily have become a pig in a blanket. Instead the lucky guy is dressed up in a dapper purple sweater. It's keeping him warm at his new home: an animal sanctuary in rural Maryland.
"He will be able to live at the sanctuary for the rest of his life with the 48 other rescued pigs," Terry Cummings, co-founder of Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, said.
Irvwin was born in late August at an "intentional community" in Virginia, where the community members raise and slaughter animals for food.
He was the runt. He had trouble walking, his mother rejected him, and so the folks who'd eventually be eating him were instead bottle feeding the little piggy.
"Even though he was being nursed back to health and hand reared, even given a name -- they called him Carrot -- the plan was still to kill him for meat when he was about 6 months old," Cummings said.
That changed when a visitor to the community saw the wee piglet and convinced folks to let her bring him to the sanctuary, in mid-September.
He was a bit over 3 weeks old, and about 3 pounds, at the time his life completely changed.
Instead of becoming one of the 100 million-odd pigs killed for meat every year in the U.S., he'd become an ambassador of cute, who "spends his days running and playing in the sun, chasing chickens, rooting in the dirt and hanging out with his best friend Evie, the three-legged baby goat," Cummings said.
Irwin's about 10 pounds now. He'll likely expand to be about 50 times that size.
He's a special heritage breed of pig that produces an impressive, wooly coat -- if they get to live that long. So at some point, he will no longer need that purple sweater for practical reasons (if we're lucky, he might still wear one in a bigger size for adorableness purposes).
There's a strangeness to Irwin's situation, of course -- that being small and weak turned out to be what saved him. Cummings says that it's an oddly normal kind of story at Poplar Spring.
"Many of our sanctuary animals have come from similar circumstances. The only reason that their lives were spared was because they were too sick or weak to stay with the group," she said. "It is somewhat ironic that the sickest animal would be the only survivor of the entire family that will be slaughtered."
Since he was saved -- since he is so winning -- Cummings hopes that Irwin's good days ahead will help demonstrate why others like him, strong or weak, should be given that same grace.
"He should have a good long life of around 15 years, and he will be very loved and cared for here," she said. "Irwin is so incredibly happy and healthy now. He enjoys his life to the fullest!"
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