Sausage Party

Pigs Escaped Into The Forest!

bumpin’ that bumpin’ that bumpin’ that bumpin’ that

Evenings around here are not eventful. Most days I am so exhausted by 4PM the idea of having to leave the farm, socialize, or do anything besides prepare and plan for the next day is out of the question. I wind down easily with dinner, gentle stretches, and a bedtime that is very impressive to athletes and the Amish, but would have me laughed off of Hinge.

This past Sunday, I’d changed out of my chore clothes and my yoga mat was unrolled on the living room floor by 5PM. A little later than usual, but I had been trimming the overgrown hedges around the farmhouse after evening feeding, and kinda got carried away. I moved wheelbarrows of debris at the end of an already long day and wasn’t in the mood (nor did I have the energy) to cook anything complicated; so dinner was a plate of pan-fried bratwurst with kale on a bun. My entire Sunday evening was supposed to be eating this glorified hot dog, putting on a movie, and strengthening my core. That’s a fine Sunday night, if not fancy. One anyone could relate to.

Then I heard a knock at the door.

I could see the large frame of a man outside, and instantly recognized my neighbor Tucker. Tucker is a retired town sheriff currently working at the High School. He’s the same guy that plows my driveway in snowstorms, texts when a bear or coyote is heading through his property towards mine, and lets me hunt and hike on his land. Seeing him at the door is never a reason to panic, but could be…. There was the rumble of his idling ATV in the background and I knew he was either here to hand me a plastic bag full of cucumbers from his garden or tell me some bad news.

The man was not holding a bag of cucumbers.

I opened the door.

“There are five pigs in my yard”

Great.

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I already knew what happened. Earlier when feeding the pigs in their rubber pans inside the barn, I realized there was a wasp nest forming in the doorway. Not in the door frame itself, but tucked into the folds of an old horse blanket hanging off a ladder just inside. The wasps weren’t anywhere near the pigs (and their paper nest was just in the early stages) but for me to use the barn I had to pass within 10 inches of their construction project and I’m allergic. Bees can sting me all day and I get irritated and itchy, but one wasp makes my skin bubble and swell. Two stings looks like someone hit me with a baseball bat. Three or more and my infected areas look like someone inflated me with a bike pump. It’s bad.

So, when I zoomed passed their nest to enter the barn and open the latched door to the pig pen, I filled their rubber bins with feed and then left, closing the pen door behind me but forgetting to latch it. There’s a hook on the swinging door held in place by a snap bolt, and in the rush to avoid the wasps I had forgotten to snap it.

I thought nothing of it. I wasn’t worried because I had forgotten to secure it before, always on accident, always because I am thinking about too many things. It doesn’t happen often, but at least twice this summer when I walked into the barn for breakfast rations, I was impressed these sweet angel pigs stayed in their pen instead. All it would take is pressing on the open door.

Well, third time’s a charm. They figured it out. It was around 5:30 PM that I was at my stove frying a sausage when the entire sounder of five pigs trotted past the other side of the farmhouse, left my lawn, headed up the road, and then started exploring my neighbors’ property.

Now, my neighbors “yard” is a historic mountain farmhouse with over a hundred acres of forest, fields, and ridges. And there is NOTHING pigs love more than running around the woods. These five had never escaped their pen before. They were probably half drunk on their freedom in a world of rotten logs, grubs, and backyard gardens they couldn’t wait to destroy. If I didn’t get them back not only would I be out thousands of dollars in pre-purchased pork shares halfway into the growing season, I would be responsible for any damage they could cause on a tear through folks property and roads. It would be dark in a few hours. My heart rate started to rise and I told my neighbor to wait while I grabbed a bucket of grain.

Neither of us were that worried at this point. Pigs have escaped over the years here, even sometimes trotting up and down the road a bit, but it was never something the collies and I couldn’t handle. And pigs are creatures of habit. If they escape on your property and are in sight of the place they slept the night before, you can basically leave the barn door open with a full feed bin and they will return for dinner and tuck themselves in like a flock of chickens.

But these pigs were already off property. They had never been anywhere but the farm pen they were born and raised in, then loaded into a trailer and brought here, to another farm pen. They were already long gone from my farm and heading towards the wilderness and I had no idea if they would find their way back before nightfall.

Best case scenario: I walk into my neighbors yard, shake a bucket of feed, and they follow me home like a pied piper. That was the hope, so after loading a five gallon bucket, I ran up the road with Friday, heavy bucket banging against my thighs.

When I arrived moments later, no pigs were in his lawn. No pigs were visible anywhere. We couldn’t hear them, see a trail, see any sign they had done anything but delicately ran across a well-kept lawn and fucked off into the woods. Tucker’s wife said she last saw them head around a corner of the yard and disappear into the trees.

Now, these pigs are not pink little darlings. They are a dark heritage breed called Wattles. They’re brown, black, and rust colored, just like the forest floor. Also, they are fast as hell when they want to be, and evolutionarily designed to devour and explore.

I mean, I get it. But these animals had to be located, herded (or bribed) back home and fast. What was going to be an embarrassing bucket shaking walk now had now become search and rescue operation of woods, lawns, trails and logging roads and Gibson was gone. He was the one who dealt with this kind of problem. Friday was beside me, but her passion is law enforcement (barking at foxes and breaking up chicken fights) not herding sentient biceps. If she scared them they would take off over a ridge and be good as lost, over a mile from home.

My neighbor could tell I was a wreck about this. Not that I was exactly hiding it. He had lived on this mountain his whole life and grew up with plenty of livestock. He knew what it was like to lose a herd of cattle up there. And since he was a cop, he knew what an actual panicked situation was. And it wasn’t a frazzled lesbian in pajamas worried about pigs in his yard.

This was nothing to him, and he remained calm and humorous. But I was already jumping to worst-case scenarios. Intrusive thoughts amped up to me already in a jail cell for involuntary manslaughter because pigs made it to the highway and took out a series of families in minivans on their way to church and I’d lost everything because wasps made me forget to secure a latch. This was the beginning scenario of the intrusive thoughts. I was starting to feel a panic attack humming.

This pig is smiling because of the destruction he has wrought upon the land

So there I was, standing with a heavy bucket in my oversized yoga pants and a tank top. I was in sandals, and not even my good pair I wear in the river to fish, just shitty floppy sandals. I looked worried. Tucker looked intrigued. Friday looked confused. The pigs were gone. I told Tucker I was going to run home, put the dog inside, and be back in second and could he please drive me around in that ATV to find them faster and maybe scare them in the direction of home?

I ran home, put Friday inside, and then ran back. It had not been ten minutes, but I was beside myself. Pigs can really book it when they want to move and people have lost larger sounders a lot faster. We searched around the lawn where his wife saw them take a corner and head up into the forest. I shook the grain bucket and called “Pig Pig PIIIIIIIGGGGS! HEY PEGS! pegs pegs pegs! *bucket shaking like a maraca* PEEEGGGGSSS!” and nothing. Not so much as a grunt.

At this point my neighbor probably noticed the color leaving my face, and to his credit started solving the problem. He got us in that ATV and we rode up into a neighbor’s backyard and tried to see the pigs anywhere from that vantage point, but no sign. It was now past 6PM and I was worried the time it took me to get a real plan, put away the dog, and run back and forth was enough time for them to be on the highway by now. It wasn’t looking good.

But Tucker had a plan. He said to try looking back farther into his property where a logical path could take them up towards a stream and fields. I knew where he meant. I have been hunting birds and riding horses around his property for a decade now. But I also knew pigs weren’t exactly sheep. They move in groups but not by instinct like a flock of birds or a herd of deer. They govern themselves more like the opening seconds of the Hunger Games. Every pig for themselves! Alliances form. Loners go rogue. Pigs are smart and fast and strong. My only hope was they were somewhere together, as a group, and somehow I could get them back to my barn, which at this point was pretty far away.

We headed up through his land to where he mows a trail big enough for a truck to drive through into the forest. My eyes were darting around the woods like I was stalking deer, not looking at the trees but through them, beyond them. Nothing.

Then, as if some benevolent god was listenings, a few more yards into the woods, just over a stream, I caught the shape of their bodies hanging together near a fallen tree, eating green moss off the top of it like cotton candy.

The relief of finding them was a rush of hope. Tucker pulled up just past the group and turned off his engine. I got out with my pail of sweet feed, hoping the molasses and corn would be enough of a selling point to follow me home. It was not. They could care less about the feed. But at least I was looking at them now. This was progress. This was 90% solved.

So Tucker and I started herding them out of the woods and down towards the mowed path out of the forest. This was not a smooth nor delicate endeavor, at least not for me (which is embarrassing seeing as I was the one raised by border collies). No, it was a sweaty pair of humans trying to godbother swine into gently and efficiently moving in the direction we needed.

My neighbor was calm and collected. I was more frantic, running to the head and side of the pack and trying my best to keep them from darting left or right into the tall grass and back into the forest. Tucker drove them calmly from behind, first on his ATV from a distance and then got out to walk them across his golf-course sized lawn, to his driveway, then back down the road at a trot to my farm. And it wasn’t until he was making jokes about the runt of the crew being the slowest and silliest that I felt things would be okay.

The time it took to get them from that moss log to the barn couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes. It felt like ten hours. We were both dripping sweat from the endeavor, as the humidity was relentless and the task fraught.

We got them back to my barn area, where I dumped the entire bucket inside (past the wasps) and waited for them all to calmly walk back inside. Once the last red pig’s curly tail passed the threshold, I shut the door, latched it, and turned to my neighbor and hugged him so hard I could have cracked his back.

It is amazing. Amazing. To have a neighbor like this out here, who gave up a peaceful Sunday night to help a woman catch her lost pigs. He didn’t have to do that. He could have texted me and said good luck. But instead we spent a wild half hour playing border collies to a pile of pigs with a hiking problem. And knowing my valuable animals were home, safe, and chowing down on sweet feed I was finally able to exhale like I meant it.

Crisis averted. Pigs safe. Pen door latched and tied with bonus baling twine for emotional insurance. Lesson learned.

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When I finally walked back into the farmhouse, covered in dirt, black and blue marks, and sweat… Friday was sleeping under the dining room table instead of her usual curious greeting at the door. I didn’t think anything of it until I walked into the kitchen and saw my sausage dinner, which I had left out on the table, was hers in my absence. She’d pulled it off the counter and I couldn't even be mad about it. Let’s face it, I deserved it. This whole mess was because of a forgotten latch 8 hours ago.

I scooped some protein powder into a blender, topped it off with ice, milk, and a banana and called it a night.

I am very grateful, very lucky, and very stupid for all of Sunday evening. But grateful tops the heap. Because at least on this mountain, we’re here for each other. And that’s the future I want for America. A country where a retired linebacker of a cop and a cartoon badger of a lesbian can team up to do the impossible. Or at least, avert the hofficically possible. And that’s worth celebrating on a Sunday at sunset, even if it meant a protein shake instead of brats.

Brat Summer was never going to last forever.