Our Porsche arrived, as Porsches do, at the gate of a Lake Forest estate. The green gate opened silently, revealing a lush expanse of lawn that seemed to sweep into forever, and we drove up a long, white-pebbled path.
My friend Neal Zucker had introduced me to the estate’s owner, Estelle Walgreen, at the Ravinia Festival gala in July. Sheathed in a vintage white-silver dress, she looked as rarefied and restrained as any Lake Forest lady. I was understandably skeptical, then, when Zucker blurted:
“She has five pigs in her yard, and they weigh 600 pounds each!” Now, as Zucker and I pulled up to Walgreen’s white-brick manor and unfolded ourselves from the car, I was still skeptical. There were no pigs in view — just Estelle, whose husband is a grandson of the drugstore founder; her children, Ricky and Agatha; and a dog named Westleigh.
I eyed the usual Lake Forest accouterments: a black Range Rover, parked next to a row of perfectly manicured hedges. And then, from behind the bushes, a snout-twitching, black-hairy, grunting beast emerged, brushing past the Range Rover and waddling toward us like some primitive relic come back to haunt its ancient roaming grounds.
“Hi, Tubb Tubb!” called Walgreen, 42. Snooooooooort. “Chubb Chubb is coming,” she added, nodding at yet another rough beast slouching toward us. “They’re twins.”
“Lucinda’s never going to recover,” Zucker said. “They’re Kune Kunes,” Walgreen explained, ignoring him. She patted Tubb Tubb’s fleshy flank. “They’re a New Zealand breed of pig.
“They’re actually from the wild.” “Who’s that, Mommy?” asked Ricky, 8. A white truck passed through the gate. “I think the laundry man.” Two teat-like pieces of skin swung from Tubb Tubb’s jowls. “Those are feelers,” Walgreen said.
“They feel for food?” I asked, finally able to speak.
“In the wild they would, but here they’ve got nine acres of grass to graze on,” she said. “Can I ride him?” Ricky asked.
“No!” answered his mother.
“I did last time. Remember, I fell off ?”
“Yeah, but it’s bad for their legs.”
Snoooooort. Tubb Tubb wandered toward Zucker, who was wearing a Gucci sport coat and Gucci loafers. As the pig got closer, Zucker suddenly needed to talk to his office.
“I’m going to go inside, OK?” he said, waving his cell phone and rushing off, as both pigs made more long, groaning snort-noises.
Walgreen translated: “They’re sort of telling me, `Why aren’t you letting us in the house?'”
She bent down and tipped her glass of lemonade to Tubb Tubb’s mouth. The pig drank greedily, showing his yellow-and-black plaque-covered teeth and bony tusks. SLUURP. SLUURP. Snooooort. “That and orange soda, they love,” Walgreen said.
While Ricky and Agatha, 6, spun around the driveway in the golf cart — on nine acres, you need a golf cart — Walgreen explained that Tubb Tubb and Chubb Chubb, nomadic by nature, know the house is a fruitful place to forage.
“They go in and see what kind of food is around — usually the dog’s food — and then go back out,” she said. “Ricky! Don’t crash with your sister!”
House is their home
Walgreen’s three other pigs — who are pink, Vietnamese potbellied pigs — also have access to the house. Chloe, at 14 the oldest, likes to snooze on the French Aubusson rug under the dining table. Piggy, Chloe’s son, prefers the outdoors. But the biggest one — 400-pound Pinky — would live inside full-time if allowed.
“He’s the major domo,” she said. “He comes in for a day or two at a time. He’s very spoiled.”
For good reason. Twelve-week-old Pinky was as cute and pink as any newborn when he arrived at the estate in 1993 — a fifth anniversary present from her husband. They didn’t have children then, and she showered Pinky with the love and luxuries befitting a prized first child: his own bedroom on the second floor; a red bassinet to sleep in; and a box full of pig toys to keep him entertained. “He was my baby,” Walgreen said.
At six months, Pinky had ballooned to 150 pounds and, at 4 feet long, had outgrown his bassinet. By his first birthday party — attended by 50 of Walgreen’s friends, including Zucker — he weighed 400 pounds. He was potty trained and as attached as any only child to his mother. At night, he often awoke and padded down the long hall to the master bedroom, where he’d collapse in a heap. “He’d get lonely,” Walgreen explained.
When Zucker emerged from the house, we climbed into the golf cart to find Pinky and the other two pigs. “Can I drive?” Ricky asked.
“No! You and Agatha are riding in the back!” We motored south past a prairie that Estelle is restoring. The lawn is pocked with pig-size depressions of dried, cracked mud, where the pigs often rest. “I’ve loved pigs my whole life,” Walgreen said, raising her voice over the whir of the cart. “I mean — I love pigs. In 8th grade and high school I was voted Miss Piggy because I always had things with pig motifs — pins, T-shirts.”
Pigs’ retreat
We turned west past a pond, disturbing a blue heron that took flight, and stopped at a quaint cottage with a peaked roof and shuttered windows. It is, of course, the pigs’ retreat. Inside, hay covered the floor, and a radio in the corner played classical music, something Shostakovich-like. “That’s on all the time — it’s very soothing for them,” Walgreen said, looking around but finding no pigs. “They’re in here almost full-time during the winter, because they’re afraid of the ice. But in the summer, who knows where they’re at?”
“Mommy, there’s one here!” Agatha called. We walked out to see Chloe emerging from some bushes along the property’s northern fence line.
“She seems very friendly,” I said, petting her tentatively. Her hair felt as coarse and translucent as fishing line.
“They’re all friendly,” Walgreen said. “Pinky’s the only difficult one. Pinky’s very spoiled.”
And very elusive. We climbed on the golf cart and sped off. “All right, they’ve got to be here somewhere,” she said. She called in Spanish to the gardener, Chris, who bathes the pigs every Sunday and brushes their teeth: “Senor, donde estan los dos otros puercos? Pinky y Piggy?”
He yelled back: “Cerca de los conejos.” He saw them by the rabbit hutch. We zoomed on.
Walgreen, whose parents are from Mexico, grew up near Midway airport. “We didn’t have pets,” she said. “We didn’t have yards.”
She dreamed of living on a farm, and for reasons she cannot explain, had a soft spot for animals. All of the pigs on the estate, except Pinky, came from breeders who no longer wanted them.
We rode past the rabbit hutches; one is under construction for Honey Bunny, a giant Flemish who will grow to be 50 pounds. We flew past the back door of the house. “See how the bottom is scratched and dented?” Walgreen said. “That’s from the pigs chewing on it, trying to get inside.”
We motored around the apple orchard, and near the pig-shaped topiary, which Walgreen commissioned an artist to design out of moss and English ivory.
We found Piggy, as pink and content as Chloe, grazing near the raised garden — replete with motorized waterfall — that serves as the backdrop for Ricky’s electric train set. At 180 pounds, Piggy is the lightweight of the pack. “He’s very shy, very skittish after all these years,” Walgreen said.
Four down, one to go. We motored on, searching for the elusive Pinky. “Pinky in the early years was very difficult for me,” Walgreen recalled, scanning the grounds. “He would charge people. If you came to touch me, he’d go for you. Ask my family. They were horrified of him. He chased them. You’d see my mother and my brothers running out in the yard.”
Animal sanctuary
A friend told her about a sanctuary in Shepherdstown, W.Va., that rescued pigs. At her wits’ end, she called them for advice. And called. And called. “They sort of adopted me,” she said.
In turn, she adopted the sanctuary, donating money to buy 60 more acres of land. Now the non-profit, called A Pig Sanctuary, is a full-fledged animal rescue facility. Walgreen, a business major who graduated from Northwestern University, runs its financial accounts; the education center is named after her. “We have dogs, cats, horses, but pigs are still the focus,” she said. “We’ve taken in 500 pigs.”
We rounded a corner near a garden of wildflowers. “Oh, there’s Pinky!” Walgreen cried. “Lover!”
I spotted Walgreen’s beloved standing next to the tool shed. He was pink, hairy and, at 400 pounds, newly trim. “He used to be twice that,” Walgreen said, speeding toward him. “He would sit right by the dinner table, like a dog, and get everything. Watermelon was a personal favorite. And tortilla chips.”
Once Ricky was born in 1996, though, Walgreen began to scale back Pinky’s “major domo” status in the house. First, he got stuck in the fireplace in the middle of the night — screaming like, well, a pig stuck in a fireplace — and she banished him from the bedroom.
Later, a veterinarian told Walgreen that Pinky’s obesity was endangering his health. “That’s why he doesn’t live in the house anymore. They need to walk for their food, to graze.” She patted him proudly. “Now, he’s just the right weight.”
Many other crises have ensued. One December, Pinky broke in and knocked over the fruit-laden Christmas tree. Several years ago, Tubb Tubb crashed Ricky’s birthday party. (“The kids thought it was the entertainment, until he started eating all their cake.”) Another time, Pinky was riding to work with Walgreen and began having a panic attack. She pulled into a Burger King drive-through, yelling, “My pig, he’s hyperventilating! I need water!” (He recovered after a large cupful.)
Such is life at the Walgreen household, where none of the chaos has seemed to faze young Ricky, an inquisitive boy who has never known life without pigs. As a toddler, he thought they were like dogs — that everyone owned one. “Where’s your pig?” he would ask, arriving at a friend’s house.
Now, his friends ask if they can come to see the pigs. “They say, `You’re lucky,'” Ricky said, smiling guilelessly. “And, `Do you own Walgreens?'”
