I was as happy as a Curmudgeon gets. I was driving home with a trailer. I love towing stuff. The “payload” was small critters that can squeal like demons but would eventually become bacon. Everyone loves bacon!
During the ride I decided the critters needed names. I settled on the names en route.
The “pig containment area” was large enough and well built enough to hold a rhino. It was done on time and under budget (though it was hard work). My super awesome gates worked as they should. So did my wired electric “redneck lines” for beneath the gates. I drove right in, unhitched the trailer, and drove the truck out. I love it when a plan comes together.
The trailer was parked (in the corral) next to a crappy lean to I’d made for the pig’s shelter. Constructed out of old pallets and junk I’d made the shelter for the princely sum of about 75 cents. That what I figured a handful of 3″ Torx screws cost. Yay me! (At the end of the year I’ll probably burn it down and/or haul it away. There’s always more junk to make another one next year.)
I opened the trailer door to let the pigs free. I had room for 15 pigs and only three to occupy it. This was the biggest, sunniest, grassiest place they’d ever seen. The pigs wouldn’t budge. I climbed in the trailer and booted one in the ass.
They went apeshit and flew out of the trailer in a squealing panicked eruption of motion. Whew! Apparently you gotta’ train a pig to mellow it out? (Note: Now, many weeks later, the pigs really are “trained”. They come to you and like to be pet. They’re like dogs but smarter and less likely to chase a cat. Also they eat like teenagers and practically leap for joy if they get a treat. Much more pleasant that the screaming banshees they were at the start.)
The pigs tore around in a circle and then another. They were fast! After three or four noisy chaotic orbits they hid under the trailer. I decided to leave them there. The trailer wasn’t needed for a while.
On the way out I told them their names. “You are ‘Senator Robert Byrd’.” I said to the smallest one. The next smallest was “Solyndra”. The largest, a male, I dubbed “Bridge to Nowhere”.
Smiling I trotted to the gate. Mrs. Curmudgeon was waiting at the gate. She’d been enjoying the cute critters running around in the grass. I like to think she was awed my my masculine hunky bod… but it was definitely the piglets she was watching.
“You’re wrong” she said. “The pigs already have names.”
I shrugged.
“They are Tilly, Esmeralda, and Mr. Spanks.”
Well then, I stand corrected. Now you know their names too.
A.C.
P.S. I left the trailer in there a couple weeks. One day Foxinator called and said “you know that pigs will eat trailer wiring right?” I did not know this. Now I do. I got the privilege of rewiring the old trailer. Actually I don’t mind. The old wiring was sagging and patched and rusted anyway. Classic duct tape and bailing wire hillbilly compounding repair jobs. I spent a few bucks to get a new plug and put in new super waterproofed wires and routed it all nice and clean. To me that makes the world a better place. I’m pretty sure Foxinator doesn’t care about “good” versus “bad” wiring but I like to strike back against entropy when I can.
A piglet named Tilly.
I like your names better
Alas, it Curmudgeon Compound is not a democracy.
I think I like your names better, though I probably would have named them “Bacon” “Chops” and “Ribs.” The steer we had when I was growing up was named “Hamburger,” after all.
Our last pigs were named “Pork” and “Beans”……. the two before that were collectively called “Makin’ Bacon”.
How about “Breakfast,” “Second Breakfast,” and “Elevenses”?
Much like naming a cat is silly as they’ll never come when called, I finally decided that every pig in the herd had the same name. Next. For at least one it would be very fitting.
I’d go for “Harry”, “Nancy”, and “Barry” myself.
Oh ewww… I gotta’ eat these things.
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