Writing for Sick Chirpse over the years, I’ve come to realise that there area a lot of people out there who are incredibly lonely and will do just about anything for attention and the latest one of these is 25 year old Californian influencer Mina Alali who strives to achieve this through her relationship with a pig.
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Alali purchased her mini pig Merlin back in March 2022 and became instantly attached to him, now claiming that she’s taught him to ‘speak’ over the past year and loves cuddling up into bed with him. Of course, ‘speaking’ doesn’t actually mean that Merlin can talk, but instead that Mina has trained him to push buttons on an electronic board in order to communicate with her, claiming that this is a bit like talking to her. Sure.
Anyway, here’s what she had to say about their relationship:
I just wanted any pig open to human affection and cuddling.
Merlin is very needy. He sleeps next to me in my bed — he’s an amazing cuddler.
He’s so smart it’s actually a problem.
He presses the ‘go outside’ button all the time, and if he wants more ice cubes to suck on he presses ‘more’ and ‘ice’.
He pulled on my heartstrings [when I first saw him].
I was crying tears of happiness because my lifelong dream to own a pig was finally happening.
Pigs have the cognitive abilities of a 3-year-old, so they want attention and need to be mentally stimulated throughout the day.
If I’m on the couch, he jumps onto the couch or if I’m in the kitchen then he follows me into the kitchen.
We were invited to be on ‘America’s Got Talent,’ but I declined because my number one priority is for Merlin to be happy and stress-free.
Making videos in the comfort of my own home is OK because I’m not looking to exploit or put him in a stressful situation.
Well that’s great for her I suppose? I suppose it’s a bit weird to own a pig and do everything with it, but it looks like it’s working for her so what’s the harm? Seems like she really loves that pig and it’s not doing her social media profile any harm either as the pair of them have racked up 112,000 followers on her TikTok account. Must be extremely satisfying for them both.
For more of the same, check out what happened to Logan Paul’s pig recently. Completely the opposite to Merlin’s experience.
