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When Mark Ellsworth and his family offered to take in their new friend Matilda, they weren’t expecting her to be so … rotund.
“I thought she was like a little micro-pig,” said Ellsworth. “So my first thought was, ‘Holy crap, she’s huge!'”
Matilda is a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig and weighs in at a portly 170 pounds.
Scott and Leanne Clouthier are Matilda’s owners; they’ve had her ever since she was an eight-pound piglet.
Usually, Matilda enjoys walks on the beach, digging in the sand on the shores of Great Slave Lake and rubbing herself against driftwood.
But this week, the Clouthiers had to flee their home in Hay River due to the out-of-control wildfire threatening the community. They headed north to Yellowknife, Matilda in tow, along with the town’s other 3,100 residents and everyone from the neighbouring Kátł’odeeche First Nation reserve.
“She was definitely top of mind because we wanted to make sure that we left ourselves enough time to be able to get her into the vehicle,” said Scott.
They wanted to avoid a Marshall situation.
During the Fort McMurray wildfires in 2016, one family had to abandon their pig, Marshall, when they evacuated from their hometown. Thankfully, Marshall survived the fires and was reunited with the family.
“We figured that would be just too heartbreaking a thing to do,” said Scott.
The ‘pampered princess’
Getting Matilda out of town was easy — it’s not her first evacuation. What to do with her once they were in Yellowknife turned out to be the challenge.
The plan was to go to a friend’s place and let her roam around in the backyard.
Then the rain came.
“She’s not used to spending extended periods outside because she’s a bit of a pampered princess and she sleeps inside at our home,” said Scott.
“Even though we did build her a pretty good shelter, she just was getting wet and then coming back into her shelter and making her blankets wet.”
Matilda is a pot-bellied pig from Hay River. She’s safe and sheltering with a Yellowknife family while a wildfire rages out of control near her home.
The couple turned to social media to see if anyone could help.
The Ellsworths reached out, offering a five-foot by five-foot dog kennel in their garage.
And the opportunity to meet Matilda was too good to pass up.
“I thought it was pretty cool to see a pig, and we’ve always wanted one, but our immediate thought was just to help out,” said Ellsworth.
Still, Matilda has had to adapt. Not all of her regular amenities made the trip to Yellowknife, like her kiddie-pool-sized litter box. Now she does her business wherever she wants.
“We have to clean up after her wherever she goes,” said Scott.
But they managed to bring a couple of weeks worth of feed to keep her happy.
“She’s been awesome,” said Ellsworth. “She’s pretty quiet. The kids love her, so we’ve just been sitting out there and feeding her and petting her.”
Ellsworth has a camera installed overtop the kennel. He says he keeps an eye on her while at work. The footage — which he’s shared with the Clouthiers — is mostly of a sleepy piggy.
For two years in a row, disasters have forced Hay River and Kátł’odeeche residents to rely on northern generosity.
“It makes it a lot easier to know that people are there and supportive for you, and willing to open up their homes,” said Scott.
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