Central Oregon horses; photo by Bing Bingham
Maybe I should keep my mouth shut and my pigs to myself.
My wife and I raise a few hogs on our ranch and, for the most part, they’re a gentle bunch. That said, occasionally, a hog will become impatient, uproot a fence and go for a walkabout.
It’s no big deal.
We find them in the barnyard eating their share of the feed, and everybody else’s. We simply cut them off from the chow line, trot them back to their pen and they aren’t fed until the next day.
One day, my wife pulled up to my office on her ATV.
“We’ve got a sow out,” she hollered. “I need a hand.”
The hog was doing what they do best—gobbling spilled feed. I ran her off the banquet. My wife grabbed a bucket of grain and we led her back to the pen.
It was a nice day and this young sow was having waaaaay too much fun in the barnyard. She wasn’t ready to go back in her pen. Each time we neared the gate, she trotted back out to the feed bunks. After several near misses, the sow—and we—were getting frustrated.
That’s when a neighbor pulled up to our front gate.
Alice is a dear friend and knows cattle and horses from top to bottom. She’s never worked with pigs. She doesn’t know much about hogs and doesn’t wanna know much about them—especially those which aren’t in their pen where they belong.
I hollered and told her we were busy working with an escaped hog.
By this time, the sow was enjoying her outing playing “Ring-Around-The-Barn”—with us trailing along behind like extra children in a neighborhood game—as she romped in the warm sunshine.
Rounding the corner, I looked up and saw Alice headed our direction to help.
“Hey, Alice,” I joked, “wanna buy a sow…cheap?”
She must have thought I was seriously offering to sell her fractious livestock, because she stopped in her tracks—got a strange look on her face—and back-pedaled across the barnyard towards her pickup.
A short time later, the sow got tired of playing games and trotted into her pen. I pulled out the trusty baling wire to fix her weakened fence.
Alice was pulling out our driveway. She rolled slowly past where I was working—eyeball to eyeball with a neighboring drooling boar—on the hog fence.
“See you later,” I hollered from behind the boar, “this is your last chance on buying the sow.”
Alice got that same strange look on her face she’d had when I made the first offer. She peeled out in her pickup and high-tailed it down my rutted driveway.
Later that evening, I called Alice to apologize and tell her that I was kidding when I offered to sell her a misbehaving hog.
She said she understood that I was joking and she had to get home anyway.
That might be, but I think I’m going to quit telling silly hog jokes anyway.
Bing Bingham ©2010
Bing Bingham is a writer, rancher and storyteller. He’s stopped trying to sell hogs to the editors of this publication too. If you have a story to pass along, contact him at http://www.bingbingham.com/
