I consider the hero of this story to be, at the very least, terrific. Radiant. Humble.

Some pig.

With apologies to E.B. White, and a nod to those exalting descriptions in “Charlotte’s Webb” of White’s protagonist barnyard critter Wilbur, I am speaking instead of an anonymous real-life porker. Mine was a domesticated, omnivorous mammal belonging to the genus Sus who lived, I assume, somewhere in Iowa (based on the odds, since that is the leading state for hog production) .

That particular pig somehow had been designated an organ donor. And when—on the medical advice of my cardiologist, given the heart murmur I developed several years ago—I was judged in need of an aortic valve replacement, the aforementioned swine (and I use that term with ultimate respect) supplied the needed equipment.

That life-sustaining procedure indeed became a variant on bringing home the bacon. Not that I will tolerate any petty puns related to my circumstance or my benefactor. To eat ham or pork or sausage—which I rarely do, anyway—does not make me a cannibal. I do not have increased leanings toward a chauvinist pig. In basketball, I believe is passing to the open man, eschewing the role of ball hog.

Of course I am fully aware that, as a cultural symbol, the pig is employed as a stand-in for many human aspects, often derogatory: As slang for police (a “pig” is on the dismissive level of “the fuzz”). As an informal insult of someone perceived to be disgusting or greedy.

In George Orwell’s 1945 satire “Animal Farm,” about anthropomorphic creatures who rebel against their human farmer in hopes of creating a society of equal, free and happy animals, a pig named Napoleon is the bad guy, emerging as the dictator who causes the farm to wind up in a state worse than before. (Orwell was referencing Joseph Stalin of the early 20th Century Soviet Union, but his allegory somehow feels relevant to the United States in 2025.)

Meanwhile, it could be argued that the Looney Tunes character Porky Pig, with his terrible stutter, was not such a good model for an earlier generation of cartoon-watching children. And, in the Chinese Zodiac legend, the Year of the Pig is last in its 12-year calendar cycle because, when the Emperor organized a race to ascertain the order of animals in the Zodiac, the pig arrived late—last—and was thereby termed the “lazy pig,” who had stopped to eat and fell asleep.

Then again, the third of the Three Little Pigs was resourceful and brilliant, clever enough to fortify his house against the wolf with bricks. Miss Piggy, of Muppets lore, may have been a bit temperamental, a diva superstar, but knew a little French and was a terror in karate. Hiiii-YAH!

I never quite got the nursery rhyme about little pigs who respectfully “went to market, stayed home, had roast beef, got nothing at all and cried all the way home,” paired with a grownup simultaneously pulling on a young child’s toes. But let me be on record as a fan of the Beatles 1968 song “Piggies,” a George Harrison number which has been interpreted as a metaphor for human nature, in which the big guys lord it over the lesser folks. (2025 again?)

Anyway, to dismiss the contribution of my Iowa patron, whose aorta valve has kept me rolling along these last six years; who has, unknowingly, allowed me to feel as normally active as any septuagenarian around? In a pig’s eye!