Argentina-born Monica Dietrich overheard a mother pig’s conversation with her piglets when she was eight. She thought nothing was out of the ordinary until she told others. “I thought everyone does this,” she recalled.

Southern Californians dream of a white Christmas as they move about in a palm-tree-studded holiday landscape. The decorations are there — giant snowflakes, Santa in a sleigh, Christmas trees on street corner lots, but the temperatures are warm and snow is out of the question. But in Idyllwild, in most years, a Currier and Ives…