Hog Wild

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since my last post.  Time flies when you're having fun or when you're back to being chauffeur mom running 3 kids, 30 different places at the same time.  Ahhh gotta love back to school.  But enough about that, I'm up past my bedtime so I'm gonna get right to it.  We'll talk about back to school and such another time.  But tonight I need to tell you a little story about Hormel the Hog and an event that would only happen at the Koons Zoo. 

Remember how back in the spring we decided we were gonna be all real farmerish and bought a piglet to raise and then *gasp* butcher when it got old/big enough?  I'm sure there are still pools out there betting against me actually being able to follow thru with it.  The jury is still out but I've done really well at not getting attached and doing things like petting her and taking lots of pictures of her.  BUT she's not really helping my case when she comes running to the fence, ears flapping in the wind every time we walk outside.  Or when we yell her name.  Uggh.  She's not supposed to be cute or do cute things!  We've still got a few more months before D B Day so we'll see.  I think if it were to just magically happen without me knowing I'd be fine, it's when I think too much about it that I start deliberating and trying to convince GI Joe that we should just keep her and breed her for piglets and THEN butcher the piglets instead.  She can just be our "sow".  
Anyway, Hormel isn't always being cute.  Sometimes she's being mischevious and doing things like escaping from the barnyard and walking around our front yard, or munching on our watermelon plants in the backyard, or walking along the road in front of our house.  You know, the stuff hogs do.

One morning a few weeks ago, GI Joe called me at work.  This is the conversation we had.
GIJ breathlessly:  You wouldn't believe the morning I've had!!
PP:  Oh yeah, me too, they're out of Reese's in the vending machine.  Now what am I s'psed to have for breakfast?!?
GIJ:  Hormel got out.
PP:  Can you bring me a Starbucks?  I'm so sleepy. 
GIJ:  HORMEL GOT OUT!!!!!
pp:  Oh what's that?  Hormel got out? Did you get her back in?
GIJ: (deep sigh) You wouldn't believe what I had to go thru with her this morning.
PP:  Isn't she so cute?  I don't know if we should butcher her.  We should just keep her and she can have babies and then we'll sell the babies!  That would make us REAL pig farmers wouldn't it?!? 
GIJ:  She was running around the yard about to go in the road!  I had to chase her all over. 
PP:  So is that a yes?  We can keep her?!?  I'm gonna buy overalls like a real pig farmer!
GIJ:  I just spent 30 minutes chasing a pig around our front yard, NO I do not want to keep her.
PP:  30 minutes?  Why so long?
GIJ:  Well, every time I got close to her she got spooked and took off running the opposite way of the barnyard.  So finally, I grabbed the closest thing to a stick I could find to direct her.
PP:  Oh like one of those things the 4H kids that show pigs use? 
GIJ:  Yes, like that except we don't have one of those because we don't show pigs so I grabbed a fishing pole instead. 
PP:  Whatever works. 
GIJ:  Yeah, it worked but there's just one small problem.
PP:  You broke the fishing pole?  Was it my pink one, cuz I"m gonna be SO mad if it was!
GIJ:  No, it was Blade's and no, it didn't break. 
PP:  Phew, that's good because I really like the metallic pink color that my fishing pole is and I haven't seen very many others like that.  Although I do kinda want a different one because I'm not crazy about that reel...
GIJ:  I HOOKED HORMEL!
PP:  Uh what?
GIJ:  I was using the pole to tap her on the neck to get her to go the direction I wanted her too and she tried to run under it and got the hook right in her neck.
PP:  Did you reel in?!? 
GIJ:  No, I didn't reel her in.  I just cut the line.  She wouldn't let me get close enough to take it out.
PP:  So she's running around with a hook, fishing line, and sinker hanging out of her neck?!?
GIJ:  Yes, but she's back in the barnyard!  She'll be fine. 

And by the next day, she was "off the hook" and we didn't even have to intervene.  Although we did catch her down at the pond with a tacklebox and a stringer of fish. 

Fishing poles, they're not just for fishing.  

I'm quite certain that if we had video footage of the events that transpired that morning with GI Joe running around the yard in his uniform, fishing pole in hand, hooking Hormel, we'd be on David Letterman right now.  Can you even imagine?!? 

A younger, much less experienced, pig wrangler. Obviously, he hadn't thought of the fishing pole trick. 

Hormel now runs squealing through the barnyard in terror whenever we are getting ready to go fishing.  On the bright side, the next time GI Joe says, he caught one THIS big, I have no choice but to believe him.  The proof is in the pudding  pork. 

 Got worms?