The Hog Almost Ate my Little Brother

We frequently had a collection of unusual livestock on our farm growing up, but pigs were not among them.

 However, there was an interval each year when we did have them for a while. Their visit was short lived. Pigs arouse no feeling whatsoever in me. A pig is a pig, and the only way I really like to see one is on a plate in the form of breakfast bacon, lean baked ham, or a breaded pork chop.

In Louisiana in the 1950's hogs and cattle could roam free on the open range. This was before Daddy authored the bill to fence the highways to keep cattle off the roads.

In Catahoula Parish, in the swamps, where the sluggish bayous wind through the oak trees dripping with moss and water moccasins, the acorns are thick upon the ground. Here the small farmers let their hogs run wild to feed on whatever they could find. Each hog bore their owner's brand. These hogs became wary, wild and ferocious, some of the boars sprouting tusks that would make an elephant green with envy. Once a year, they needed rounding up, for identification or to be penned and fed corn to fatten up for the slaughter. One of daddy's friends always invited us for the round-up and each year brought us some hogs to fatten out on corn. These were our annual visitors.

We went on horseback to help round up the free range hogs roaming the swamps. 

Riding through these areas on horseback can be dangerous. Once, during a round-up I was attacked by one of those fierce creatures who tried to gouge off the legs of my horse. Luckily, the Catahoula curs attacked the hog while my horse outran the old bugger I hate to think of the outcome had I been thrown.

After the round-up, Daddy went to Baton Rouge for the regular session of the legislature. Our barn was still being built and had boards slanting down to the ground from the loft, but Daddy's friend brought us his annual offering of a hog anyway. Mother being mother always worried what disaster would befall while he was away. She explained to him that the small slatted house on raised supports with a slatted bottom, just large enough to fit in a hog one way, was not built. Note* :Since they were wild and ferocious the houses were built so they could not turn around and could stand there eating the corn, like the pigs they were, while they gained weight like an unhappy society matron with nothing better to do than read novels and eat chocolates.

The friend thought the hog would be fine in the barn lot with the horses until Daddy returned. He backed his trailer up to the fence and unloaded the hog. Our job of feeding the animals became a challenge. I would distract the hog while Bobby ran to the barn, and then he would distract it so I could cross the lot and quickly climb into the hay loft. It was quite difficult to carry a large bucket full of corn up the loft ladder but we managed. Then our plan was to throw several ears of corn at a time down to the greedy hog. 

Bobby, instead, decided that he could throw the whole heavy bucket of corn down by himself. He had not reckoned with the weight of the pail and his own small size.

 Out he went, bouncing down the boards like the baby thrown out with the bath water, landing right on the back of that wild hog. 

Bobby hung on for dear life and rode round and round the barn lot with his arms around the old bugger's neck, until that fool hog hit the fence with a grunt and a bellow that sounded like a bull elephant on a rampage. He pitched my little brother onto the fence where Bobby hung his pants on the barbed wire as he went hurling over. Turning around and discovering the corn scattered in every direction, the hog began eating again ignoring my brother.

I sat in the loft, laughing and crying at the same time. There was the hog quietly eating corn and there was my brother suspended by the seat of his britches on the barbed wire fence.

Mama was not amused. Her imagined disaster had become a reality.

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