If you ride with the big hogs, expect to wallow in the muck

My kids love this story, for reasons that will become obvious.  When I was a kid, I lived with my parents and my two younger brothers on a small farm a few miles out of a small town in northern Idaho.  It wasn’t much of a farm by commercial agricultural standards.  We had a milk cow, a dozen or so laying hens, and a half-acre garden, sufficient to keep us in eggs, milk, and vegetables.   

Primarily, though, we were pig farmers (as kids at school enjoyed reminding me from time to time).  At its peak, our pig population included perhaps a dozen brood sows and dozens more feeder pigs raised for sale at the livestock market in Spokane, with a couple reserved for the freezer.  

Me and a 4-H pig, circa 1978.  This may have
been one of Old Suzy's daughters.

On a regular basis, our entire family unit was called upon to move hogs from one place to another.  As anyone who has attempted to move a pig from Point A to Point B already knows, Point B quickly becomes the single place in the universe that the pig, with every fiber of its being, most does not want to go. Also, pigs are low to the ground, porcine missiles with stout legs, thick of neck and torso, tapered heads as solid as stone.  Me? I was 12 and skinny.

On this particular cold, cloudy Saturday in March, we were moving a half dozen sows from a wet, sloppy outdoor pen to an adjacent dry pen.  Although we wore high-topped rubber boots, the slop and muck in the old pen was knee deep in places.  Muck, by the way, is that unpleasant mixture of melting snow, rain, mud, and pig excrement the consistency of a chunky milkshake.  After much effort, five of the six sows were cajoled into their new home.  The one called Old Suzy, though, she was too smart to be tricked into moving.  She repeatedly outflanked our five-person deployment of hand-held plywood shields intended to present the façade of an impenetrable wall.  But on this day, we didn’t seem to work together so well.  Divisions within our ranks emerged.  Recriminations were uttered.  Blame was assigned.  We all were wet, cold, exhausted, and splattered with muck.  Only Old Suzy seemed content.

At some point, I lost my plywood panel.  It sank in the muck and as I groped to find it, Old Suzy switched tactics.  Rather than outflanking us, she launched a frontal assault directed at the kid digging around in the muck.   As I turned and stood, a rapidly advancing Old Suzy thrust her snout and head between my knees and continued charging.  Suddenly I was on her back, looking north while she headed south.  I was riding a hog. Backward. 

My ride lasted only a moment.  When Old Suzy came to the fence, near a corner of the pen where the muck was deepest, she went left while I went right, disappearing beneath the vile, soupy slop.  I came up sputtering and gasping, covered in muck.  Muck filled my boots, my pockets, my underwear, my nostrils, my ears, obscured my vision. I could taste it and smell it.


Naturally, my family laughed at me.  This was the new benchmark for funny.  I let them have their moment.  Then when my mom directed me to follow her to the house, thoughts of a warm bath and a mug of hot cocoa cheered me up.  Except that wasn't the plan.  Instead, when we got to the house, she ordered me to strip out of my clothes right there in the back yard.  On a cold March day in northern Idaho.  Then I noticed my mom was holding a garden hose with a spray nozzle.  And then I realized why she was holding a garden hose with a spray nozzle.

I eventually got the warm bath and hot cocoa, but not before my icy shower standing in the back yard in my underwear.  Lessons that can be drawn from this story.  One is that people using the "herding cats" metaphor need to spend some time with Old Suzy.  Another is that if a 400 pound animal is running at you, the best result is to get out of the way.  My take away, though, is this: Kids love stories about dads being dumped in puddles of pig shit.  At least mine do.