A funny thing happened..

I could see right away when I arrived Wednesday morning that something wasn’t right. Buckets were overturned, feed tubs spilled out, planting beds dug up and muddy tracks everywhere. Two of our sows had escaped their pen and were on demolition duty. The red Duroc, Dina (so called for her resemblance to the semi truck of the same name) and her cellmate Nameless were having a field day.

Most folks never have the chance to test the fact that pigs are fast. REAL fast. So it didn’t take long to figure I wasn’t going to run ‘em down alone, chasing ‘em the length and breadth of a roughly football field-sized parcel. Whichever way I pursued 'em, they zigzagged another, plowing through fences and trampling compost beds like a couple of army tanks, till we were all plumb wore out.

Rattling the corn bucket didn’t entice them to enter the open pen door. Hastily piled barricades of pallets did nothing to head ‘em off at the pass. Now, the longer they ran me ragged, the madder I got. “Come back here, I’m going to kill you!” I hollered. “You’re dead, I’m serious, I’m going to eat you! Get over here, I’m going to kill you!”

Suddenly, I looked up to see my neighbor, a policeman/pecan farmer, blinking at me over the fence between our properties. I could see him trying to decide whether to ignore me or send for backup. “No, really, I’m just yelling at my pigs,” I explained, feeling very foolish.

Finally a capture plan began to hatch. Maneuvering my beat-up farm truck crosswise to block the access drive to the corrals seemed a promising way to funnel the fugitives in the right direction. NOT. The 200-lb darlings wiggled under the truck, over the mesquite hedge, around the water tank… anywhere but where they needed to go!

I lost sight of my targets for a moment as I struggled to stuff feed sacks, buckets, rolls of fencing – anything! – into the gaps along the roundup route. Then, scanning to locate the pair, I spied ‘em, both hefty sows wedged into the horse trough, happy as, well, pigs in mud, looking for all the world like two naughty kids caught fully dressed in their wading pool. It would have made a priceless photo, but they were not eager to wait around for me to focus a shot after an hour of my murderous rantings.

Maybe they got tuckered out, maybe I just got lucky, but as suddenly as the rodeo began, it ended, with my two portly porkers simply trotting on into their pen. Makeshift repairs were made to the gate while the errant duo flopped out in the shade. Never a dull moment in country life!