Denton, Texas is what anyone would call a college town. Situated a half-hour's drive north of Dallas, it's the home of two universities. However, Denton is small enough that you can get in your car and be out in the country in five minutes. In that rural environment it's very easy to find pigs.

Indeed, finding pigs was no problem. Finding both a tattooist and a veterinarian willing to facilitate the project was another thing altogether. Previously in Houston I had made the rounds to a couple of the old tattoo parlors. In those days they were pretty moth-eaten and cheesey, so I was a bit put off by the general ambience of them to begin with. When I made my pitch, in the most generous and positive terms I could muster, I was told, after a guffaw of disbelief, "NO!" Tattooists were defensive about a lot of things back then, and I think I offended one guy's sensibilities as an artiste by lowering his art form to the barnyard. Another tattooist was worried about getting busted by the health department if word got around that he was tattooing pigs in his shop. I understood that, because tattooing was potentially a hazard for the proliferation of disease, hepatitis in particular, and in some parts of the world, tattoo shops were illegal for that very reason. The obvious remedy to all this is, of course, a vigorous sanitation regimen, including the use of an autoclave.
I gave up on finding a tattooist in Houston who would be willing to step up to the challenge, but I found a great one in Fort Worth. His name was Randy Adams. Randy was open-minded enough to listen to what I was saying, and the weirdness of it appealed to him. I had told him that I had a home-made, rather antique and scary tattoo apparatus that a friend had given me, and, concerned that I might let that apparatus fall into the wrong hands...maybe I already had... he agreed to tattoo my pig, even-steven, in exchange for that tattoo apparatus. For my next trick, I had to then find an open-minded veterinarian with a sense of humor.
:::l e s s
m o r e:::