The Porch and The Pig

So a few weeks back our friends Nay, Jay, Chani, and Captain D. came over to our house to help us rip down an old plaster wall and rebuild it with drywall. This had been a pre-planned Labour Party, and we're supposed to return the favour at their houses now, too.


This past week, Nay and Jay were ready for their Labour Party. They have an old porch on the front of their house that had been enclosed in years past and used to house chickens. You can imagine the disaster that became. When they bought their house, they ripped off the exterior walls because they wanted it to become a porch again. The floor was rotting out though, so that's where we come in.


On a balmy evening we made our way over to their house to shore up the foundation for the porch and build a new floor. My job was to take pictures and drink wine get boards out of the barn.

And take pictures.

And drink wine.

But I also helped cook dinner and stuff, and I did get a lot of boards out of the barn because Chani went there to do the same and got scared away because there were too many bats flying around. So naturally, when I was done getting boards I went back to try and take pictures of the bats. This is the best I got, but at least it's a record of the little guys:


It was very peaceful. There was a big swarm of bats and they were silently dipping and weaving everywhere, eating insects. I left them to their hunt and went back to the porch-building party, where Chani was still swearing and ducking from bats.


The porch was almost done by this time, and just as the boys were running out of screws, the last board was suddenly on and it was complete!


Huzzah! Next it will be Chani and Captain D.'s turn to get some work done on their house.

Earlier in the week, Chani and I had made a little field trip into The City to get special groceries and other supplies that aren't available around these parts. We picked up her mother on the way back and brought her to the valley for a visit. In the car on the way home, I got into a bit of a militant but polite discussion with her about the ethics of vegetarianism. Chani's mother looked at me and said "so, is your husband a vegetarian too?"

I told her yes. She blinked, looked at her daughter, and said "so, what, did you put out an ad when you bought your house?"

Honestly, it's a valid point. This is a rural area that has no particular, concrete draw for people of our ilk. None of the six of us had ever lived in Annapolis County before buying our respective houses, but here we are. We all volunteer for the same animal rescue group, we're all first-generation vegetarians ('cept the traitor Captain D.) who love sushi and other ethnic foods (which can't be found around here AT ALL), and we all have a large multitude of animals in our respective 100+ year old heritage houses. You guys think WE'RE crazy for harbouring the eight cats and three dogs right now? I'm not even going to tell you what the other two households have. I'll give you a hint though: they both have more animals in total than us, and their pets include farm animals.

We've only been friends with these people for about six months, but it already feels like years. It's strange.

This morning we got home from walking our dogs and had a phone message from Nay, asking for help with Emmy Lou.

Remember Emmy Lou?


She's Chani and Captain D.'s pet pig. Their 700 pound pet pig. She got loose again, and had been on the lam for two days now.

She had been discovered in a farmer's field down the road from their house, and the farmer was threatening to shoot her. Chani and Captain D. grabbed Nay and her truck, borrowed a cow trailer from their friend Willie the farmer, and drove down into the field to retrieve the wayward pig.

The problem was, Emmy Lou was not co-operating. They had been out for three hours trying to load her on the trailer by the time they phoned us. They were fighting all 700 pounds of her and were worried sick at the same time that she would be shot if they couldn't get her to go, and three people was simply not enough manpower to do the job.

Mark and I drove down with a big bag of peanuts and spent an hour in the field, helping them coax and corral Emmy.


I should probably mention that she's not afraid to bite, and could easily kill a person by trampling them. She was hot, hungry, sunburned, and grumpy by the time we got there. The pictures look very peaceful, but honestly, we were screaming, swearing, running, wrestling, and pushing her with boards to get her onto the trailer.

Emmy Lou was also screaming, running, wrestling, and chasing cows to boot.

I joked to Captain D. that this was his Labour Party, and then I immediately felt bad. The guy was near the end of his tether - he'd been chasing his pig for two days and wrestling with her on this particular day for four hours already, in the hot sun in the middle of a farmer's cow field, with visions of the farmer's shotgun running through his head.

It was pretty intense to be that close to an angry 700 pound animal, and to reach out and smack her on the butt to get her moving, only to have her turn around and GROWL at me. It honestly took all the strength and cunning of all five of us to finally, finally get her in the trailer. She was pushed/pulled in by Mark and Captain D., and as she finally ascended the ramp screaming and writhing, the rest of us shrieked and went into gear raising the back gate. Mark came shooting out of the trailer, ran up the gate we were closing, and jumped off into the field. It was like a car chase from an action movie. Moments later, Captain D. climbed the walls of the trailer and jumped down as well. We were done!

Or so we thought.

We drove her home to her pen, nailed boards to the sides of the trailer to make a secure hallway to her fenced yard, and lowered the trailer door.

Emmy Lou didn't want to come out.


Sigh.

It took about another half hour of prying her out with a giant board as lever/sheild (it was the top of a ping-pong table, actually) while she screamed and tried to bite Captain D., and then she walked down the ramp and was home.


We all went to the house and had a beer.