Piglets, unlike pizza, are not delivered. I’d be upset but then again you can’t get pizza delivered to my house either.
For equipment I’d borrowed the Foxinator’s “Pig Trailer”. Her “Pig Trailer” is an old horse trailer she uses for hauling pigs (and chickens, and goats, and God knows what else). The “Pig Trailer” is different from the “Pony Trailer” which is the handy little utility trailer I loaned to the Foxinator so she could drive it to a “My Little Pony” convention. That means her “Pig Trailer” was made for horses which she doesn’t have and I haul garbage and firewood on a “Pony Trailer” even though pastel cartoon ponies give me the heebie jeebies. Got all that? I can draw a diagram.
Because rural life is like it is, I bought pigs which were owned by, delivered by, and largely fed and raised by the Foxinator but the Foxinator wasn’t there to help me get them on the trailer. I was mildly alarmed because there were many dozen pigs and I was supposed to come home with three specific ones that had been jointly pre-selected by Mrs. Curmudgeon and the Foxinator based on age, breed, and cuteness. This had been setup on Facebook despite the fact that all pigs look alike to me and I don’t “do” Facebook.
Fortunately I had help. Because I’m paranoid about names, dates, information, and basically everything all the time (according to Mrs. Curmudgeon) I’ll give my friendly helper the anonymous nickname; “Pig Dood”. Pig Dood knew what to do. Pig Dood deserves a better nickname but I’m out of ideas. (You may think I write creatively. I don’t. I just stumble through life regularly falling face first into weird things and try to describe what happened. At least that’s my theory and it’s also why “Pig Dood” is the best I could think up and only slightly better than “Party A”.)
I rolled up with the Pig Trailer and looked around for a loading chute. I expected to back up to a chute, open an array of cleverly designed gates and shoo three pigs into the trailer. As you might have guessed, it was nothing like that.
There were no chutes and Pig Dood handed me a syringe. Being clueless, all I could think of was that one scene with John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
Piglets remind me of John Travolta. It all makes sense to me.
“No thanks, I’m trying to cut back.” I chuckled. Pig Dood, because he is not a nutcase, didn’t get my joke. He opened the trailer’s door and purposefully strode off to one of several outbuildings. I trailed along holding God knows what in a scary pointy delivery device as if it was uranium. Also, where was the chute?
Pig Dood wandered into a smallish shed and I got my wits about me. A lot of farm veterinary stuff happens with injectors that look suspiciously like staple guns but that doesn’t mean a syringe won’t do the same job. Plus I want healthy bacon. I’m not some hippie that freaks out about chemistry and biology. I relaxed and wondered what Pig Dood was up to.
Then… all. hell. broke. loose.
Something horrific and clearly spawned of Satan started making a noise that was never meant to be heard in this universe. It was like dolphins trumpeting on a vuvuzela while Gilbert Gottfried rapes a bagpipe… in hell.
I’m sure you know that pigs squeal. I know that pigs squeal too but this was not squealing. Saying this was “merely a squeal” is saying the Hindenburg was a “minor mishap”, the Tower of Pisa is “slightly off center”, and Pompeii had some “geologic issues”.
I was struck by a wall of sound designed to let you know that the creature involved was convinced it was going to die and he was not going to go peacefully into that dark night. Pig Dood emerged from the shed with a kicking, screaming, bundle of terror, rage, and fury the likes of which should be coming from a F-22 hornet B-52 Stratofortress with aerial constipation and not livestock.
I stood there like a deer in headlights. The piglet never gave up. He tore the air to shreds and made damn sure that everyone in the county knew it was in mortal danger and that the end was night and that all hope was not lost because he was going to fight and scream until he’d spent every last bit of every cell’s energy.
I administered the injection (which gave the creature just one more reason to believe it was going to be torn to pieces any minute and therefore it should scream louder). Once in the trailer, the piglet shut right up. Whew.
We repeated the process with a second pig. It had seen it’s sibling torn from their happy home it had time to ponder it’s grim future and prepare to wail even louder. Which it did.
Then came a third pig which was a larger male in an outdoor pen. Pig Dood had to chase that one a while. It made less noise but struggled harder. I think this was the “cute” one.