The Saga of the Three Little Pigs

It's hard to know where to start this story. Perhaps with "Once upon a time..." there was a housewife who wanted to put her acreage to better use, but didn't know where to start. Thanks to the internet she found many natural and affordable ways of tending her piece of land without having to buy a tractor or infuse the soil with dangerous but conventional chemical fertilizers and additives.

After much research and thought and looking, she decided that pigs could do a good job of clearing her land, and Tamworth pigs, especially, they being notorious rooters. But alas, the nearest for sale were over 2000 miles away... UNTIL she found a litter a mere 625 miles away.

SO...

After ordering and paying the deposit on my 2 little Bacon Bits, I set out in my 2002 Toyota Camry to obtain the critters. A man an hour or so north was also a buyer, and I told him if we could fit it with mine, I'd be happy to bring his back too. He had ordered one. How do you transport 3 pigs 10 hours in a CAR? Well, it's no small feat. I bought a 10x12' tarp, folded it in quarters, and lined my trunk with it. Then I bought a 30"x36" rabbit hutch, but had to remodel it to 26"x36". After this I installed it in my trunk on top of the tarp. I folded one of the backseats down so the trunk area was open to the car. Then I set out. I stopped a couple hours later to pick up my grandma, who will be 80 next month, who wished to join me on the adventure. We drove about 9 or 10 hours from there, and stayed in a nice little motel about a half hour from our final destination. The next morning we left at 6:30 or so and arrived at the piggies' home. The lady had told me they were about 10" at the shoulder (leaving plenty of room in my 16" high cage), and the guys at the feed store told me I could put half a dozen weaner pigs in the cage, no problem. Well, I am going to show them these pictures. We managed to get all 3 in the cage, and then had to put sawdust in (leftovers from wood pellets exposed to moisture). As you can see from the bow in the cage ceiling, they're probably about 16.5" at the shoulder. :) It is a universal truth that furniture in the showroom looks smaller than the same furniture in your living room. I guess the same rule applies here. Livestock in the field looks much smaller than that same livestock in the trunk of your car. Believe it or not, the next 10 hours or so were fairly uneventful. We got lots of attention at gas stations though. All in all, they traveled great. Better than my 2 kids, in fact. However, I have not actually yet tried transporting my kids in the same manner as the pigs. Perhaps they would travel better that way. When I dropped my grandmother off at her home, I fed the pigs. That was the only time I was worried that they might bust through the cage, perhaps. I shut the trunk and folded up the backseat and let the car rock and squeal and snort for a few minutes. Then I set off for home.

It was dark when I arrived. We could not reasonable extract a pig through the same doorway they came, so we undid the entire front face of the pen. Hubby had wonderfully set up their home just as I had read. We had earlier made them a little hay/straw-hut (was that the first little piggy made his house of straw?), and Hubby dutifully trimmed the brush and put in a dual electric-wire fence (which we've read is all it will take to quickly train a pig) one wire 6" from the ground, the other 12" higher. Apparently our pigs haven't read the same information, because piggy #1 (which was the piggy for the other guy) was carefully (okay, with much shrieking and bloodcurdling piggy-squeals) placed in her cave, but in no time had made it over to check out the wire. One yip. Two yips. apparently she'd made it between the wires before yip #3 was established, because she took off in all directions in the dark, of course. Our land is not entirely fenced in, and I excitedly knocked on my neighbor's door to inform them of the situation. Please keep your eyes out for a very expensive 16.5" tall pig. If they had any doubts about my sanity, they are certainly laid to rest now. The flashlight batteries died. But I heard a grunting in the dark. I 'herded' said pig back towards the car and pigpen. You do not need to grease a pig to be unable to catch it. That pig can really move. I made a distressed call to the sellers of the pig, and among their recommendations was to place the cage (other pigs still within) in the hay hut and perhaps their sister would join them. We did this, and shut off the hot wire, and in no time at all she was in with her siblings. At which point we piled a pallet, 2 bales of hay, an enormous and heavy steel trough, and some cinder blocks at the opening. We tossed in some food, poured in some water, and prayed hard that they would keep till morning. Then I made an urgent call to the buyer up north to please get his pig before we lose it again. He came the next afternoon and did an amazing job of removing his pig ("Tammy") from the hut and installing her in a kennel-carrier. No more touring the property for her. In the meantime, I had jump-started my old Toyota Celica with my new Toyota Camry, put in the kids, and headed to the feed store. I bought 10 fence posts and 6 cattle panels, which I had my favorite guy, Gary, place on the ROOF of my car with a forklift. Don't worry; I used a carpet scrap to "protect" the "paintjob" and I could almost see out the front window. Gary is 70 years old and tosses those feed sacks (and cattle panels) with more finesse than I can ever manage. He dutifully tied one end of the panels to the front bumper, and the other to the rear. I drove home amid many odd stares. Then I pounded fenceposts (which I can't make straight to save my life) and wired up the panels. That took awhile. But I now had an outer perimeter, a supplemental fence, if you will. THEN I let out the pigs...

They must've first thought they were in a torture chamber. They kept circling the hut, pushing each other up against the hot wire (which I added another strand to) and yipping when their ears, tail, snout, or wherever came in contact with the fencing. Then they spent the rest of the day in their hut. They did come out to eat, eventually, and immediatly started rooting up the ground with amazing ease, considering their young age (7 weeks). I could probably use them to dig a ditch when they're 6 months or so.

We are naming them Ezekiel and Gertrude (Zeke & Trudy). My grandma had an odd dream the night before we picked them up (and she never recalls her dreams). Something about them running on a big hamster wheel, and relating that wheel to the wheel within a wheel in Ezekiel. Hence, his name. I'm not sure where the Gertrude comes in, except that it was her given middle name which she dropped when she got married. So, come on out any time. Meet Zeke and Trudy, the reasons I can't leave the place ever again. At least not until I am a little more confident in their staying put.