When we were kids, we had quite a few pigs on the farm. Having been around pigs my whole life, even though I like most all animals, especially dogs, cats, and horses, I still don’t care for pigs all that much. Maybe that’s why I aggravated them so much as a kid. It’s been a long time since I’ve written any “Pig Stories”. You can read several of them by following the link at the bottom of the page when you have completed this story.  The older I get, I tend to worry a whole lot more about the horses and/or cattle “getting out” and ending up in the road. Which more often than not would be in the middle of the night. When we were kids neither we nor Uncle Ned gave any thought to it. As a matter of fact, very often when the pigs or any other livestock we had would get out it seemed like they ALWAYS ended up in the road. The pigs were the ones that mainly got out. This invariably would ALWAYS happen in the middle of the night. On the nights that happened, we would hear people blowing their horns because the pigs were in the middle of the road. Back then that never bothered any of us because neither Uncle Ned nor we would get out of bed to round them up and drive them back into their enclosure. Uncle Ned would just wait until the next morning to round them up and put them back in their enclosure, or Tim and/or I would. Fortunately in recent years the few times the horses got out (usually due to me leaving the stall door open when I clean stalls and leave the barn to empty the manure cart) I’ve always been able to catch them using some “sweet feed”. I just fill the coffee can about half full and start shaking it and the horses will come right to me, even after they have run almost to the woods several hundred feet away. It’s a good thing they “think with their stomachs”. Unfortunately this doesn’t work with cattle since they don’t think with their stomachs, for that matter they don’t think with their heads either! A few years ago when I got home from work, one of Tim’s bulls had gotten out and was grazing in the hay field. Tim wasn’t home at the time, so I went out to put the bull back in. He was close to the road as usual but at least this time it wasn’t in the middle of the night and he wasn't in the road. On my way to get the bull back in, some kid stopped along the road and came up to me with some “advice”. He said not to get in back of the bull but to walk slowly toward him and get in front of him. Hearing that, I got to use my “old man” phrase. I told him that I was rounding up cattle long before he was born. For that matter no doubt even before his parents were born! He sheepishly went back to his car and headed back down the road. As I look back on that, I should have waited until he helped me with the bull and then given him my spiel. Telling him that sure made me feel good, but at the same time it made me feel old too!  Oh well, I guess that’s the price you have to pay for knowledge and experience. When I was a kid, I was always amazed that my Grandmother "Ollie" seemed to know about everything. She always seemed to know the answer to the hundreds of daily questions I asked her. When I ask her how she knew all that, she exclaimed, "Because I've lived!" Now I understand what she meant since I am probably about the same age she was when I asked her all those questions about "life in general". I'm not nearly as sharp as I was when I was younger, but I have amassed a lot of knowledge over the years of just living and experiencing many things in life. I can't wait until my grandson Ethan gets to the questions stage and I can answer some of his questions at least. I just hope he never asks me why kitchen tap water tastes better than bathroom tap water. I don't think anyone knows the answer to that mystery. I've purported some theories over the years, but nothing definitive that I can prove. I'm really hoping Ethan never asks me the ULTIMATE question that has no answer: What do women and cats want? Now if I could just find the underlying cause of why livestock always tries to get out of their enclosures where they have all the food and water they want, then I may be well on the way to possessing true knowledge and wisdom. Until that day, I will keep a careful watch on the horses and cattle, especially at night! 

 

For related “Pig Stories”, follow the link below to the story directory (There are too many to list here.)

 

(Click here to see Page 1 of the directory).