An Unexpected End to the Pig Story

    Yesterday at the end of the blog, I was waiting for the owners of the escaped pig to arrive and cart her back home, but as usual, what I was expecting was not what happened.  Three friendly, older teens arrived in a pickup truck (no trailer to haul the pig away) and surveyed the situation.

    By the time they arrived, the pig had left the spot where it had been sleeping against our house, but I saw it over by the compost pile.  I got a bucket of very old corn, left over from when we used to have chickens, to try to tempt the pig to follow me.  The pig seemed disoriented and wasn’t really interested in the corn, but seemed to follow me anyway.  I led her into our fenced garden, then shut the gate so she couldn’t get out.

    The teenage boy, son of a local farm family, asked me if I minded if they shot the pig in my garden.  He said that if I did mind, that was okay, they would come pick it up, take it somewhere, and then shoot it there.  I knew it would be a lot less stressful for the pig to be shot where it was, exploring the garden, so said it was okay to shoot it there.

    The deed was quickly done, then the three began the difficult job of dragging the 300+ lb. (140 kg) corpse across the garden, across the yard and to the pickup truck.  Luckily I had some 2 X 12 boards we could use as a ramp to get the pig into the bed of the pickup.   Once the pig was positioned at the bottom of the ramp, I helped as we rolled the heavy carcass over and over, and up the ramp and into the bed of the pickup.

    I was thanked several times for all of my help, goodbyes were said, and up the driveway the pickup carrying the pig went.

    It was a sad ending.  It was not the first time the pig had escaped.   About a month or so ago it had made a sudden appearance at a neighbor’s property.  Our place was a bit further to go for the porker.  It had walked 1.2 kms. (3/4 mile) if it traveled in a fairly straight line to get to our place.  One of the teens mentioned that they didn’t want to have to feed the pig all winter long, so I guess it’s fate was sealed.

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