Emboldened by my success, sleeplessness, and the winter sunshine, I decided to immediately go get the piglets.\u00a0 Earlier, a friend had offered to help me move them if I just gave her a call.\u00a0 Over breakfast, Pretty had offered to help me move them when she got home from school.\u00a0 But I decided that it was just as well if I went and got them by myself.\u00a0 After all, I had been the one petting them and complimenting them over their meals for the last few days. We were bonded.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 We’ll see.<\/p>\n I nixed my various ideas of wheelbarrows, or truck beds, or crate methods of transport.\u00a0 I decided to keep it simple.\u00a0 Grab a pig, carry her down to the garden, and plop her in the pen.\u00a0 I unlatched all the gates between the kidding barn and the garden (assuming I would be one-handed), went into the pig pen, and began stroking the girls a bit.\u00a0 Which was good.\u00a0 Then I reached under the tummy of Penny and tried to heft her up.\u00a0 That was bad.\u00a0 Because she was ridiculously heavy, unreasonably squirmy, very squealy, and, to top it off, I had one foot planted inside the pen and one on the outside.\u00a0 Straddle position over a fence is not a healthy means to lift a healthy pig.\u00a0 One cannot possibly shift one’s weight while maintaining one’s balance while holding the pig.\u00a0 End result:\u00a0 groin pull, dropped pig, farmer falling into pig pen with images of killer boar scene from Old Yeller flashing through her mind, and pigs trying to push frantically under barn wall into backyard where puppies are whining and scratching hungrily, waiting to snatch them up.\u00a0 Basically, 4 days of friendliness destroyed in 4 seconds of grabbiness.<\/p>\n But here’s the upside of coffee.\u00a0 First of all, I was able to get back on my feet so fast that mud didn’t even have a chance to soak into my pants.\u00a0 I think if you had been standing there, my movements would have been a blur.\u00a0 ‘Cause the kidding barn sure was blurry to me as I bolted to my feet.\u00a0 Unless that was the blow to my head on the feed trough as I got up.\u00a0 Second, I was not even remotely deterred by my failure.\u00a0 Upon seeing the pigs had jammed into their doghouse and were cowering, fearfully, I smiled to myself.<\/p>\n Perfect.\u00a0 I would just carry them down to the garden in the doghouse.\u00a0 That way I could move both of them at once and I wouldn’t have to make another trip back to the barn to get the doghouse when I was done.\u00a0 I tipped the dog house up so the pigs were in the back corner and slid it out of the kidding barn, into the barnyard, and to the gate.\u00a0 Which I had left unlatched.\u00a0 Which was now open because the goats and sheep were in the front yard nibbling on my magnolia tree.<\/p>\n I stood there pondering my options.\u00a0 I could not let go of the doghouse or the pigs would get out.\u00a0 I could not get the goats and sheep back in the barnyard without letting go of the doghouse.\u00a0 It was too late to call my friend for help as I never, ever carry my cell phone on me.\u00a0 I might just have to wait for Pretty to get off the school bus.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 Maybe.<\/p>\n But, as I mentioned earlier, time waits for no woman and it sure as hell isn’t going to wait 3 hours for the school bus.\u00a0 After a few minutes of stillness, the pigs sensed my weakness<\/span> indecision, burst apart the snap-together seams of the plastic doghouse (damn you, China!), and ran oinking angrily into the barnyard.\u00a0 The barnyard that was corralled by field fencing.\u00a0 Now the squares in the field fencing were small enough to contain piglets.\u00a0 But I knew the wire wasn’t strong enough to keep them from pushing it apart if they really tried to squeeze through it.\u00a0 I held my position and called to them in my sweetest, most complimentary tone.\u00a0 No matter what I wasn’t going to chase them and cause them to run hard, panicking, into that flimsy fencing.<\/p>\n Of course, I didn’t need to.\u00a0\u00a0 Because at the sound of oinking piglets, the goats and sheep looked up from the magnolia tree.\u00a0 How interesting!\u00a0 How exciting!\u00a0 How novel!\u00a0 And the entire herd surged through the open gate, back into the barnyard, and began chasing the piglets around.\u00a0 Huh.\u00a0 All the years I’ve had to waste buckets of grain to bring the herd back home when they managed to get loose.\u00a0 Apparently, I could have played the sound of a frightened pig and they would have rushed home to investigate.\u00a0 They just don’t teach these things in the homesteading books.<\/p>\n As usual, CC had to use her girth to push things over the top, and as she galloped toward the piglets, trembling in the corner of the fence at the top of the driveway, they freaked out and forced their pudgy bodies through the field fencing.\u00a0 Into the driveway.\u00a0 The path to freedom.\u00a0 Or to an end as roadkill.\u00a0 However you want to look at it.<\/p>\n I didn’t want to look at it at all.\u00a0 I ran, fueled by 6-10 tablespoons (really, whose counting after the first 3 cups of coffee?) of caramel mocha creamer and the fear that my garden tilling piglets were about to become part of this state’s increasing feral hog problem, into the barn and started scooping grain like a madwoman.\u00a0 I poured it into feeders and troughs and sprinkled it on the ground.\u00a0 As my critters rushed into the barn, I locked the door behind them and then ventured into the front yard, shaking a trough of grain, and calling for Penny and Pushy.<\/p>\n At the sight of me, they freaked again and pushed themselves back through the field fencing and headed for the pond.\u00a0 Perhaps we were not as bonded as I thought.\u00a0 I followed, slowly, shaking the grain, and walking in a nonthreatening crouched (incredibly painful for a recent groin pull) position.\u00a0 Pushy, bless her heart, bought it.\u00a0 She got a nice long drink from the pond, then headed straight for me and my grain.\u00a0 She followed that food through the gate by the bottom of the driveway, across the gravel, up the bank, and through the garden gate into the confines of the 8′ tall chain link fencing around the garden.\u00a0 Then she stayed there, contentedly munching scattered sweet feed, in the bright winter sunshine.\u00a0 Which is proof that skinniness is highly overrated.\u00a0 Those of us with a little meat on our bones are clearly more resilient, recover quickly from shock, and carry on bravely.\u00a0 We are gentle, easygoing, and forgiving.\u00a0 Who needs the drama of PTSD when a sweet treat can make all the badness slip away?\u00a0 A spoonful of sugar, people, a spoonful of sugar.<\/p>\n Penny, being the thinner and more delicate type, required some convincing and coddling.\u00a0 She would not approach the grain unless my back was turned and if I moved it she ran off and had to start inching gradually closer all over again.\u00a0 She wanted to get into the garden with Pushy but was suspicious of the open gate and wouldn’t enter.\u00a0 Eventually, I stationed myself to the side of the gate, the trough on the ground next to my legs, some grain spilled in the entrance way to the garden.\u00a0 I figured I could shut the gate quickly if Pushy started coming out, but I was still enough and far enough away that Penny might eventually go inside.\u00a0 I almost lost hope when Penny began snuffling around in the leaf debris and snatching up little blades of grass and\u00a0 weeds.<\/p>\n If she was one of those slender types that pretended to prefer greenery over the sweet stuff then I was in for a long wait.\u00a0 Some of those determined skinny minnies will nibble on a salad all day and wait to hit the brownies until no one is around.\u00a0 Please.\u00a0 We know you want the good stuff.\u00a0 WE ALL KNOW YOU WANT IT!<\/p>\n And she did.\u00a0 She finally nibbled her way to the garden gate, started scarfing up sweet feed, and then meandered in next to Pushy.\u00a0 Having learned that my piglets are not the touchy\/feely\/carry type, I locked them in the garden, and went up to the house for eggs.\u00a0 As soon as they heard eggs cracking into their food bowls they were all about follow-the-leader.\u00a0 Even Penny.\u00a0 They followed those eggs, with their heads in their bowls, slurping happily, right into the pen.\u00a0 And it wasn’t such a big deal to make another trip up the driveway to fetch their doghouse.\u00a0 In the end, it wasn’t such a big deal at all.\u00a0 Sure, it felt so bad to have my precious piglets on the loose.\u00a0 But it felt so good once they were settled in their nice, new movable pen.<\/p>\n So I’ll sleep well tonight.\u00a0 Because I’m exhausted.<\/p>\n Because I’ve had lots of fresh air and sunshine.<\/p>\n Because I have a little something that a friend gave me for Christmas and I stashed away just for days like today.<\/p>\n Because my pigs are (finally) in the garden.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_6788.jpg\")
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