Wilbur’s Warning:  A Late-night Adventure

It’s easy to want what you don’t have. That’s why there’s sayings like “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” Ask any sheep, cow, or goat, and I’m sure they would agree. “Of COURSE it is. Is that even a question?”
Humans often ascribe to this idea as well, wishing they had someone else’s car, house, boat, etc. Sometimes we’re willing to go to great, conniving lengths to get what we don’t have, only to feel somehow less than satisfied when we’ve achieved our prize. Somewhere along the journey, what we imagined is not quite what we find in our grasp, leaving us either wanting more or wishing to return to life before the misadventure.
Such was the case for some of our pigs on Friday. It had already been a long day, with a much-needed drenching rain from early morning into late afternoon. Kara had cooked up another beautiful Farm-to-Table Friday Dinner at Farmstead, replete with fresh garden salad, crusty ancient grains dinner roll, herb-baked tilapia (from our aquaponics greenhouse), a wild rice pilaf, roasted broccoli, and peach Melba with her beloved vanilla caramel gelato.
The last of the satiated guests were heading to their cars, and we were clearing the tables when I noticed just how much quicker the darkness settles in the evening. It used to still be only dusky at 9:30, but now the night arrives an hour earlier. It was overdue that I should lock all the poultry into their coops, to keep out any stalking predators. Kara was planning to fix our dinner, but I promised to be gone only long enough to close in the birds before coming right back.
But no sooner had I started the old, rusty, red Jeep and backed it out of the service entrance, then what would come into my sweeping headlights but a grunting, eager, white pig. A big pig. One of our Kunekune pigs, certainly, with its waddles dangling and short snout sniffing curiously. It sauntered from the shrubbery towards the Jeep, as if appreciating a lighted way. I left the vehicle running, hopped out, and ran back to the Creamery, hollering, “Kara, Kara! There’s a loose pig!”
Now, none of our pigs live alone. So when one is out, it’s likely several are out. But which ones? Where might they have gone? And how were we going to find them all in the darkness of night and round them up safely?
The white pig by now had made its way down the lane, heading determinedly towards Farmstead Creamery. Mom and Steve rushed out with a bin of kitchen scraps to keep him occupied, while Kara jumped in the Jeep with me to assess the situation. I hadn’t even had a chance to change from my dinner hostess attire, but off we went anyway, putting the needs of the animals first.
Pulling up into the barnyard, a speckled black-and-white pig appeared by the maple trees. Another white one was snuffling under the barn light, while a third was investigating the turkey fence. I kept the headlights rolling while Kara jumped out and rushed to the barn, calling her iconic, “Pig-pig, pig-pig!” She grabbed a bucket of grain from the store room and began shaking it. As Pavlovian as puppies, the pigs in the barnyard flocked to that familiar sound, and she lured them into the south wing of the barn. With five safely inside, munching on the grain, Kara shut the sliding door and fastened it tight.
We then turned our attention towards the pens of pigs in the West field. Which group had escaped, and how? I crept the Jeep along, lighting the way for Kara with her grain bucket, as pigs began emerging from behind the woodshed, between the round bales, and over the hill. Slowly, carefully, we made our Pied Piper progress, until we came to the paddock where the group we call “The Carolers” live. In winter, this dozen of piggies would like up along the edge of the fence, squeal-singing at our approach through the snow. But now, there were only two left on the right side of the fence.
It turns out that the white pig that had wandered down the lane was Wilbur, one of our celebrity pigs from a previous summer. Did he still remember where all those yummy pizza crusts used to be? Had he come to tell us that the crew was loose in the yard? If he hadn’t been there in the road, or if I had waited to close in the birds until after supper, who knows when we would have found the pigs. And who knows how far they might have traveled!
With headlamps and the trusty plywood box-on-skids we had built to pull behind the ATV for pig moving, we brought Wilbur back to the paddock, herded the four in, and drove the five at the barn over in twos and threes. We wrangled up any available hog panels to patch the piece of field fence they’d mangled into their escape route, and finally made it back for dinner at 11:00 pm.
“Funny,” Kara said, “I was just thinking of expanding their pen. Guess they had the same idea.”
We piled our nice clothes for the wash, put Mom’s good shoes on the boot dryer, and laughed at how Wilbur had come for a visit to warn us of the great escape. Even with all those kitchen scraps, weeds, and garden goodies, the grass must have still looked greener on the other side of the fence. At least we found them all! See you down on the farm sometime.