What Do You Do When The Pigs Are Bigger Than You?

Weighing in at about 90 pounds each I don't think they're such cute little piglets anymore. And, they have this irritating habit of getting behind me whenever I go in their pen and rooting at my calves and trying to chew on my boots - a trick that was cute when they were little - not cool now that they're bigger. Plus, but the time I turn one around to shoosh one of them away another one comes around the other side headed for my other leg. I'm sure I look like an idiot tripping through the mud trying to scare the pigs away from me.

 I thought I had the perfect fix to the problem: I moved their feed and water troughs close to the fence so I wouldn't even have to go in their pen anymore. I can simply dump the slop over the fence and can reach the water faucet from outside their pen. Tada!

 Now, don't get me wrong: the pigs have done an amazing job of rooting up the little enclosure. It was full of burdocks and weeds and who knows what else they've dug up (rocks, sticks, stumps, bricks, nails, etc.) and they have done an amazing job making it look like a perfectly rototilled garden. That was until it started raining three weeks ago. Then it turned into, well, a pig sty! The foot of beautiful tilled dirt turned into two feet of boot-sucking, slippery-as-snot mud which is what forced me into moving the troughs against the fence. I was lucky to leave that pen alive some mornings.

 Well, the two feet of hilled-up, mounded-up, stinky-ass, slicker-than-snot mud has now turned into the Himalays of frozen tundra. I kid you not: there are frozen peaks of mud and pig poo at least 3 feet tall out there. So, night before last in the freezing weather I ran out to throw some more straw in the pig house. Did you know pigs get goose bumps? Poor things....

 Anyway, it was dark and I was carrying probably 20 pounds of straw through the pig pen trying to see using light from the neighbor's barn to reflect where the peaks and valleys of frozen pig poo were. A head lamp would have been smart, but I digress...

 I'm trying to help these things out, ya know? And there they came: all three of them, swarming me like I was a cart of fresh produce. I got so freaked that they were going to knock me over I tripped on a peak of shit and nearly went face first into the dirt. I just kept remembering what my dad said about his friend who's own pig bit his leg and he had to have it operated on. Dear God. What have we done? I stumbled around and managed to get the straw in the house and make a speedy exit. I keep wondering though...if I'd fallen down who would have found me? Todd would have come home and found the baby watching Shrek, the dog laying there hungry and no sign of me. Because, really, we've all seen Hannibal Lecter. We know pigs eat people. And people eat pigs...it just depends on who comes out of the pen alive, right? I'm working on some kind of straw-launcher so I really never have to go in there. I'm not gonna die in there.