And so, my dad bought 19 little feeder pigs, and, uh — but before we got them, we had to dig a trench all around the area they were going to be kept in, and you have to bury the bottom of the woven wire fence like a foot down, because pigs dig. And you can’t keep a pig in if you just have a fence that’s, uh, touching the ground or a little bit above the ground, like you can a cow. And so we had the laborious task of burying all this fence and stringing fence and putting fence posts, and just the whole deal. And so then we got these 19 little feeder pigs. And my dad had built a shelter for ’em out of pl- plywood.
And so, I remember one day in particular, that the neighbor had come over to see the pigs, because that’s what farmers do is they go and look at other peo- — each other’s stock. And this neighbor had come over to look at the pigs, and the pigs were all sleeping in this shelter. And somebody barked. You know, pigs will do a bark that is a warning bark. And that shed exploded. Little pigs went every direction, and they blew off the sides and the roof, and everything, and we’re all just standing there. It was me and my dad and our neighbor, we’re all just standing there looking at this, not saying anything, and it’s like, “Holy smokes!” They just exploded that building for no reason in particular, they all ran around and then just went about their business, it was nothing to be scared of.
So anyway, we had these pigs, and we fed these pigs, and we — I remember my sister was home from nurse’s training and she had mono and she was sleeping a lot. And one day, everybody was gone except her and me. She was sleeping in the house and I went out, and darn it if those little pigs hadn’t figured out how to get out. There was three of them. They were like escape artists, and they — these pigs had gotten out and they were making furrows in the yard. I don’t know if you know anything about pigs, but they look for grubs and stuff by digging with their snouts, and their snouts are like a plow that goes through the dirt. And they were going through our yard, and they had just made a mess of the backyard, digging up the backyard there, and I was trying to get ’em rounded up to get in, but one person cannot herd pigs. Because pigs go every direction. They’re not like cows. If you get a cow started in a general direction, the other cows will go, “Oh, okay, you’re going that way. I’ll go that way too.” Yeah, but pigs aren’t like that. Pigs are all independent and they go every direction.
So I had three pigs. So there was obviously — they were going three different directions, and I got so mad because I couldn’t get the darn pigs organized, and I went and got my sister, and she was griping because she was tired, because she’s sick. And anyway, that wasn’t the last of it though, th- those — it seemed like it was always the same three pigs that somehow, they would figure out how to get around a post or get between the gate and the post. And they were, like I said, they were escape artists.