Who could use a story with a happy ending? I know I could.
The World Series. The Browns. The election.
Since Tuesday, Facebook has become a cesspool of vitriol and I am shocked and saddened by the reactions from both sides. When did we become a country of hate and “it’s my way or the highway?” Where is all this inclusion of which we speak?
I can tell you it’s not on a farm. It’s like they are animals here. (Wait. They are.) Some are good. Some not so good.
I have a friend who is raising two pigs for the grandkids. Actually for their freezer, but I don’t like to think about that part.
Maybe the pigs know this and that’s why they become quite aggressive if you’re a little late feeding them. Maybe they are just aggressive all the time, but the food helps them to focus on it rather than you. Did you know that pigs have actually eaten people? If you’re going to have a heart attack, do not have it in a pig pen.
Years ago, I dated a pig farmer. It was a short-lived relationship because of his pigs.
I had picked out a cute little guy from one of his litters and named it Frank. I held Frank, took pictures with Frank and cuddled with Frank.
Then one day, there was no Frank.
Over dinner at the Hoof and Horn Restaurant in my hometown of St. Joseph, Mo., I asked him about Frank: “What happened to him?”
“I was afraid you’d ask that,” he replied, chewing his ribeye steak. He swallowed and finished, “Remember that cold spell? Well, Frank was the runt of the litter and he got smothered by the other pigs.”
“Oh, no. What did you do with him? You buried him, right?” I asked with tears in my eyes.
“I was afraid you’d ask that,” he said with a solemn face, putting down his fork.
“Where is Frank?” I yelled, a little too loudly.
“In the manure spreader,” he whispered.
“In the manure spreader??? Why didn’t you bury him and give little Frank the dignity he deserved?”
“Cuz the dogs would dig him up. Besides, he was just a pig, Robin.”
That was the last time I saw the pig farmer and the last time I thought about the awful things that can and do happen on a farm.
Until a couple of weeks ago when a hawk got my favorite chicken, Helen Jane Sparkles.
Helen Jane was the sweetest chicken you ever saw. Reddish brown with white speckles, she had a fluff of feathers she wore like a crown. Maybe that’s why she had trouble seeing. We brought her inside one day and trimmed her feathers, hoping she would find her way to the rest of the flock instead of under the horse trailer where she would stay all by herself.
When we sold the horse trailer, it never occurred to me that Helen Jane had lost her favorite hiding place.
I found her feathers all over near the barn, and I remembered how cruel nature and farm life can be. One day you’re as happy as a pig in slop and the next day you’re in a freezer or a manure spreader. One day you’re a free-range chicken and the next day you’re dinner for a red-tailed hawk.
It has occurred to me, more than once, to go back to the city where the only nature you see is the occasional dead squirrel in the road or eating a peanut on top of your television, but that’s another column.
Then, you’re cutting your grass one day contemplating farm life on your zero-turn mower that you’ve finally mastered, and a stranger stops by to introduce herself.
You compare notes on grass cutting, dogs, raising chickens or ducks and protecting them from wild beasts, and somehow the conversation turns to the stye you have on your right eye.
This “stranger” takes off her mother’s wedding band and tells you to rub it on the stye and you do it, because she says that’s what she did growing up and it worked for her every time.
Believe it or not, it did work for me. I am now stye-free, and I have a new friend who understands my heartache over losing a chicken named Helen Jane Sparkles.
And I decide, with all of life’s ups and downs, to stay in the country where I will never, ever be a pig farmer.
Contact Robin Swoboda at Robinswoboda@outlook.com.