Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [74]
My sister Kathleen and her husband Mark have raised a couple of pigs each of the last few years. Mark does the butchering himself, using his skid-steer bucket to hoist the carcasses for the evisceration and skinning. My brother John hasn’t raised pigs for a while, but he often tells the story of the first pair he butchered. They were brothers from the same litter and had shared the pen every day of their lives. On butchering day John shot the first pig between the eyes, and by the time it hit the ground, the other pig was licking up the blood and nibbling at the bullet hole. John used to raise his eyebrows and reenact the scene as if he were the bemused survivor: “Huh! Fred died!”
Then, half a beat later and still in character, he’d brighten: “Let’s eat ’im!”
My youngest brother Jed raised pigs for several years but recently sold them all with the exception of his favorite sow, Big Mama. The sow hasn’t farrowed for a while, but he keeps her on pension because he doesn’t have the heart to ship her. Big Mama is approximately the circumference of a backyard LP tank and nearly as long. These days she is docile and grunty, but when she was younger, Big Mama had a litter and began to savage them. Our family grew up reading the wonderful James Herriot veterinarian books, and someone recalled a story from All Things Wise and Wonderful in which an old farmer dealt with this very problem by procuring a bucket of ale from the nearest pub and letting the pig drink herself docile.
Having neither pub nor beer at hand, the boys sent Dad to town for a twelve-pack. This was great fun in light of Dad’s teetotaling ways, which had become quite public a few years back when one of the incumbent town board members encouraged him to take his turn as a public servant and Dad agreed, but first vowed he would never sign a liquor license. No problem, said the official, only two of the three people on the board are required to sign. Dad was elected to the board, and sure enough shortly thereafter one of the other two board members needed a liquor license. Ordinances stipulate that you can’t sign your own liquor license, so Dad was on the spot. He didn’t sign. So you can appreciate the murmur when New Auburn’s one-man temperance union approached the counter at the Gas-N-Go and plonked down a case of Ol’ Mil. I imagine the word reverberating up and down the street: “Seriously! Bob Perry! Swear t’God! Hittin’ the barley pop!”
But the sow guzzled the beer, and it did the trick. With half a jag on, she let the piglets nurse in peace. Everyone was happy: the sow got a snootful, the piglets got dinner, and my brothers got themselves a good story to tell. As did the garbageman, when he dumped Bob Perry’s recycling bin the following week and noted a smattering of crushed beer cans.
In all the buildup to getting pigs I have pretty much exhausted the reserves of my brothers and brother-in-law, peppering each with question after question regarding the housing, care, and feeding of porkers. Fortunately they are men of patience who furthermore have learned over the long term that their indulgence will be amply repaid by the quality of entertainment provided by my incompetence once I get rolling. These are men who can build things and fix things. I am convinced they frequently convene outside my presence to compare notes and shake their heads in wonder. They have so far stopped short of poking me with sticks.
So I have been talking pigs for months. But now the time has come. I had visions of myself trundling