The Toto Bird and the 18 piglets: TOTO BIRD, #2

By Giuseppe Cristiano

The Toto Bird has seen a lot over the years, but eighteen piglets with no mother around is a new one, even for him! Despite the fact that he was heading somewhere important, he now finds himself make a detour – carting the whole little of piglets to an animal sanctuary not that far away.

It's a hard journey that's made even more difficult by the humans that they meat along the way; the butcher man, the farmer, the concert goers, and even the activists at the nearby dam. Everyone is trying to do something, but humans are so stupid that all of the goodness is lost under the fact that they're just super self centered.

And with so many piglets relying on him, it's up to the Toto Bird to find a way around all of the mistakes that the humans are making.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223267744

Book preview

A Tale Of Animal Humanity

Chapter One

Finding Eighteen Tag Alongs

Early morning light filters in through the branches of the trees, and the Toto Bird makes his way through the under brush, chirping a merry sort of tune along the way. His feathers ruffle up when a droplet of dew lands on them, and he shudders and shifts a bit. With a trilling cry, he hops up onto a fallen log.

Clawed feet dig into the soft wood beneath his scaly feet. He scrapes his claws over the surface of the wood and looks about, but there’s nothing interesting to see. The Toto Bird makes another soft trilling sound and hops down from the top of the log, landing in the brush with a thump.

He gives a low honk and keeps going, always on the look for something more interesting to see. The brush starts to thin out, and the Toto Bird can hear the sound of a nearby highway. It comes with a rush of traffic, and then silence, and then more traffic and more silence. The cars come in bursts, as cars are want to do,

The Toto Bird doesn’t like cars.

He misses the days when the humans used animals to get around. It was so much safer than, and quieter, and less smelly. The highway might not smell to people, but to animals it’s a truly rotten scent. The people have laid our tarmac, and they’ve spilled oil, and the gasoline and diesel clings to the air, and -

It’s just not great.

Horses were better. Donkeys. Traveling by foot. What happened to that? If the animals can still get from place to place without a car, he doesn’t understand why humans can’t.

But not understanding it doesn’t stop the Toto Bird from going up the long hill on the left side of the highway, and then pausing at the edge of the tarmac. He looks about, waiting for the cars to stop, and is about to cross the road when he sees something very strange.

The left side of the highway is a long, steep hill, but the right side of the highway is a ditch.

The Toto Bird cocks his head to the side, waiting for the road to be clear. He can hear traffic trundling along in the distance, and doesn’t want to risk getting tapped with a car. Soon, there’s another truck coming up the highway. It’s a big truck, with a bunch of metal wire crates on the back of it, and high wooden sides to keep the crates still.

Behind the first truck are several others. Cars and vehicles, a mess of traffic that’s moving about through the street. Among them is a motorcycle, which is weaving between the cars, and behind that, two cop cars with their sirens blaring.

As the first truck comes around the curve, the motorcycle jerks in front of it. The truck with the cages on it veers to the side.

Bang, bang! The motorcycle shoots out a tire on the truck! The sound of the gun shots startles the Toto Bird, who honks something fierce and then scrambles back down the hill by several feet.

There’s the screeching of metal on tarmac, and the sound of the truck flipping itself over, straight into the ditch. Then, the screaming of humans.

The tires on the truck were shot out to try and cause an issue for the police cars, and it works! The truck rolls upside down and the other vehicles in traffic have to try and swerve not just around the truck, but around the cages that are being thrown off of it. Another car slams into a different truck, the metal of the hood crunching. Glass explodes everywhere!

And even more terrifying to the Toto Bird than