Rural Living

[kevin_standlee]

One of the neighbors out here has at least one pig. I think it's meant to be a pet, although I'm not certain. This morning, looking out Lisa's father's living room sliding-glass door, I saw the pig making its slow way across his lawn. Now one doesn't want to mess around with pigs. They are large and can be aggressive. However, I also know Lisa doesn't like the neighbors' animals, be they dogs or pigs, wandering into her father's property, because it sets a bad precedent. So I made my careful way out onto the porch, prepared to retreat should the pig prove to be more boar-like than piggy.

"Shoo!" I called, and the pig looked startled and jumped a bit. "Git!" I yelled, and waved at him. He turned and trotted away a few steps. I slowly walked toward him. "Come on, go home, pig! This isn't your yard!"

Slowly -- that pig is so fat I don't see it doing anything quickly -- he trotted toward the road, with me keeping pace behind him. If I stopped, he stopped. Once he went through a hole in the hedge and out onto the road, I decided my work was done and went back inside. I do wish I'd remembered to take a picture of this incident, however.

Comments

[rebecca817.livejournal.com]

When we were in 4H, we raised pigs. One year, coming back from the county fair, one of the pigs nosed the gate on the pen on the trailer up and managed to get out. My dad chased it down and grabbed it's back legs. He said it was like hanging on to a rototiller. Then one of my brothers helped him get it back into the trailer.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Pigs are pretty intelligent animals, and the neighbor's pig-pen is not at all secure. That pig doesn't really have to work very hard to go walkabout. I'm just glad he's good-natured enough to go home when I tell him to do so.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's more dramatic than the chickens that used to wander into our yard when we lived in Menlo Park. The best part of that was the cat's reaction.

[randy-smith2.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who grew up around pigs, this sounded pretty funny. Try herding fifty or so of them sometime. They are not herd animals. They are much too intelligent for that.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Thank you, no. We had four or five of them on my grandparents' farm, and that was more than enough. Fortunately, we also had a much more secure enclosure for our pigs than the neighbor here has.

As long as this pig remains good-natured, I do not mind (much) shooing him out of the yard. However, I'm aware of how bad-tempered pigs can be, which is why I'm reluctant to get too close to one (especially one that probably outweighs me) without a stick in my hand.

While I've been the family City Slicker for well-nigh twenty years now, spending my youth between my grandparent's farm and a set of US Forest Service bases in the Sierra Nevada has left me prepared for the challenges of rural living at times like this. I'm surprised at how easily some of this stuff comes back to me.