rough morning

i had quite an adventure this morning, which did not at the time, and still does not, seem funny to me, but upon contemplation, i realized that some of you might be entertained by a description of the situation.

because it is a holiday here in massachusetts (patriots day, AKA the only thing good about this state besides the red sox), matt and i are responsible for doing the chores at the farm. and matt went out of town, leaving me alone, but i assured him i had total control of the situation, despite my uneven knees.

so i bundled myself up in complete waterproof gear to brave the monsoon and headed out with jake and nina to feed the animals. everything was going rather smoothly and i was making pretty good time, despite my inability to bend or put my full weight on my left leg. and then i got to the pigs.

it would be safe for you to assume that a story involving bad things about the pigs would focus on boris, but this time it was one of the sows, betty, who barrelled right past me and out of the pigpen when i opened the gate to bring them their food. so now, here i am, with a gimpy leg, in the pouring rain, having to chase a creature who is the biomass equivalent of three of me and who simply does not want to return to her pen (in the pig's defense, i wouldn't want to return to that pen either. there was over a foot of standing water outside their little pig shack and the whole place is disgusting. but still- she's a pig. she's supposed to love that!).

i hobbled after her as she trotted happily down the lane between all the barns and sheds. i was carrying a bucket of grain and hoping to tempt her back into her pen. and then, both the pig and i noticed a soaked little black creature standing in her path- jake the dog. my first thought was, hurray! jake is a herding dog. he'll help me get the pig back. but then i remembered the boris bite. and i realized this pig, which outweighs me by a factor of three, outweighs my little black dog by a factor of eight. i was terrified that the pig was going to eat my dog.

so now i picked up a big stick and started poking the pig with it and screaming at jake at the same time to get away. jake was confused- he loves other animals and really wanted the opportunity to spend some time getting to know the pig. and i was holding a stick- did that mean there was soon to be some fetching going on? jake kept running perilously close to the pig, i kept screaming and poking the pig with a stick and trying to limp ferociously in her direction in order to encourage her to return to her sodden pen.

and then the pig freaked out- started kicking her back legs and bucking like a bronco, grunting and oinking and, i am pretty sure, trying to figure out how to eat my dog. so i turned my attention to jake and finally slapped his bottom to get him away from the pig. jake then announced his retirement from the presidency of the "sarah is my favorite human" club, effective immediately, and took off.

by this point, tears are mingling with rain on my face and i am starting to get hoarse from yelling at the pig and my dog and i am seeing no way out of this situation. i am not strong enough to make the pig go anywhere and, although i feel like i am fast approaching the point, i am not currently mean enough to make the pig go anywhere so we are just going wherever the pig wants to go, her rooting at the ground, looking for food, and me limping along beside her, futilely poking her with the stick and trying not to totally freak out. what could i do? i couldn't go inside and call someone, because who knew what the pig would do if i stopped poking her menancingly? and who could get there fast enough to help me get the pig back inside?

i was cursing jake for being a bad herder, matt for leaving me alone with the chores, and myself for opening the gate to the pigpen, and then, up charges nina. nina, whose whole head is smaller than the pig's mud-covered snout. i wish i could tell you that nina saved the day, but she didn't. she just made me even more scared and upset, because i can't even calculate the fraction of the pig's total bulk represented by the littlest dog. i wanted to give up and lie down and really let lose with a good bout of sobbing, but i remembered reading that if you ever were to fall asleep in a pig pen, the pigs would eat you alive within a day.

stay with me, people- i am almost to the anti-climatic finish.

i practically threw nina out of way, but she just kept coming back, thinking this game was even better than fetch. she also really hadn't had a chance to get a good sniff of the pig's butt and didn't want to leave the scene until that happened. i finally threw the stick instead of the dog, and she went charging after it, oblivious to the panic i was in.

there's not much left of the story now- really just me slapping the pig on the bottom, occasionally leaning on her with all my weight or nudging her enormous head with my shoulder, and first yelling, then openly pleading with her to go back into her pen. and then finally, i realized maybe i could just convince her to go into another pasture instead of the waterlogged pig enclosure. she trotted right in behind me as i carried the bucket of food into a less soggy pen. disaster narrowly averted.

and i think perhaps all the exercise was good for my knee. it is feeling much better this afternoon.