Piglet is in the refrigerator wrapped in plastic, thawing. Now what?

Charles Lamb wrote the real "Dissertation Upon Roast Pig" in which he posited that the origin of cooking food occurred in China when a house burned down and the family discovered how much better roasted pig tasted than raw pig, so they started building houses just to burn them down with pigs inside.

But we're beyond all that, surely.

So, there's the piglet, thawing in the refrigerator, and now what?

Edit: it's intended for the picnic, and it's intended to be smoked on a New Braunfels offset smoker, heat to be supplied by hardwood charcoal and smoke to be provided by wood to be determined, hickory, apple, grape vine trimmings?

Butterfly the pig?

Rub it?

Brine it?

Well, my experience is with roasting, not smoking. But yes, butterfly, brine and rub.

I like hickory for pork, but you can also mix it with some fruit wood like apple.

One issue with doing a whole piglet is the skin, I love crispy pork skin as much as love almost anything else in the world, but it can cause problems when smoking. The skin will block the smoke from getting to the meat and butterflying it will only expose a small amount of the meat to the smoke (the best smoke ring I have ever achieved has been about an 8th of an inch and that was without skin, I have never achieved a smoke ring on meat protected by skin). This is why most whole hogs are chopped so that the smoky meat can be distributed evenly with the non-smoky meat. The skin will also get in the way of the brine, as like the smoke the skin will block the brine from working on the meat beneath it, and will likely have an adverse effect on the ultimate enjoyability of the skin (which I would rub with a bit of neutral oil before putting it in the smoker so that the skin will become extra crisp). Similar issues will arise with the rub as well, if you rub the skin it will only transfer to the meat if you include the skin.

If you can, after butterflying I would de-bone the piglet as much as possible, this will allow you to get the most smoke and rub contact with the meat.