Thursday, January 28, 2010

Still Life With Pigs IV (and deer)


Pig
PigIf you just started reading these pig stories they are about two newlyweds and 4 half grown kids who are deluded into thinking they can farm by evil spirits.  OK, they can farm but it's sort of a comedy.....




For those of you who aren't lucky enough to have played midwife to 30 sows @ a time a farrowing house is where they have babies.  Every month a new batch of sows go through there, the babies are raised to a certain weight and everyone gets moved, the sows to the "woods" and the pigs to the nursery.  Before the next bunch came in the farrowing house was practically sanitized.  Pressure washed and swabed down.  The only time it smelled decent.

One evening I was pressure washing the farrowing house.  It was almost a relaxing time because the kids had done the other chores and my husband was home doing something behind the farrowing house in the woods.  A pressure washer is a machine that heats up water and then squirts it out hard enough to etch wood.  That's why the kids weren't doing it although they did learn later.  Anyway it makes quite a bit of noise, I was probably singing (badly) @ the top of my lungs and the kids were in the house which was on the other side of the farrowing house, being that they were 9,13, 16, and 17 they were probably playing video games/had the stereo blasting/or were fighting.  

I got through washing and went to the house,  I hear husband coming  and he burst in the kitchen slightly bloody from the forehead.  He's all like I could have been killed and no one would have come, blah blah blah.  (this man never gets excited but when he does it's a bit dramatic)  He wants to know why I didn't come when he yelled.  I told him the chances of ANYONE hearing him when the pressure washer was on and he was on the other side of the woods, feeding floor and farrowing house were none.  We might have heard dynamite.  He is obviously going to live so we ask him what happened.    This is priceless but he will tell the story so he will let me now I think?  We won't tell him I told on the internet ok?

He said "a doe attacked me, a mama deer and her baby was crazy and made her attack me."  My husband came in on first of the hippies but wacky weed wasn't in either one of our vocabularies @ that time so naturally the kids and I immediately bent over double from laughter.  I'd taught them to take everything serious like that.  He did not think this was funny.  It took awhile for him to see it as such and us to convince him we would have come to his rescue IF WE COULD HAVE HEARD HIM!!!  did I mention we couldn't hear him?

It seems that he had been fixing fence really not too far from the farrowing house.  This fawn had come up to him and was nosing around, the mama showed up and acted aggressive.  Evidently the fawn wasn't an Einstien because fawn thought if husband was scared fawn should be too.  Husband had crawled under the tractor by this time and fawn followed him making distressed fawn noises.  He couldn't get it to leave.  Finally it came to it's senses and went with it's mother but she like stalked off, no timid tippytoeing for her.  She had gotten in one lick on husbands forehead which was the blood and the hoof print.  I'm sorry but it was just all so funny then and we couldn't quit laughing.

BTW husband?  He's only like close to 6 ft but he's shaped like a wedge (OK he used to be and he used to weigh several pounds less but so did I) and just a guy who looks like you don't want to mess with him, sort of thick up @ the top.  Unless you are an enraged mama deer evidently.   

In his defense in a previous life (first marriage) we had a bunch of dogs once @ the other farm.  They went into the woods on one side of the pond once and came out where they went in about a minute later.  There were part shepherds, Saint Bernard mix, a terrier or two and a poodle border collie mix.  And they were running, 

for their lives,


you guessed it a mama deer,



she was striking out with her hooves in front of her and I swear she had her teeth bared like she was growing.  The dogs were NOT turning around to see.  She ran right by us humans, didn't have time to go around, those DOGS had gotten to close to her BABY and she was mad.  

So those little innocent woodland creatures with the big liquid eyes?  It's all just an act.  As my daughter who was mentally scarred for life by the squirrel in my basement will attest to as well as my husband and his enraged doe.  

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