A Convenient Catastrophe

"Who can say what is good and what is bad?" This theme from a Buddhist story of a man and his prize stallion--wherein the man baffles his neighbors by never assenting to the goodness or badness of "obviously" good or bad turns of fortune in his life but is repeatedly vindicated in his demurring--came home to us with exceptional pith over the past 27 hours.

Last evening while Janelle was out for a series of (masked, physically distanced) errands and the girls were at my sister's place for a (masked, physically distanced) play date, I (Jason) got to a reasonable stopping place in my computer-based tasks and headed outside to slop the hogs. As is my wont, I paused after pouring the slop to watch them devour the mishmash of stale bread, fruit and vegetable scraps, and waste dairy liquids. It never fails to please me to watch and listen to the unwanted bits, ends, side products and excesses redeemed with gusto by these enthusiastic recyclers.

This could be why most of our photos of the pigs include them eating:

The boar (Morris) and sow (Rosie) having settled in to their respective meals, I retrieved some bedding materials to cover a muddy patch in their corral. As I was walking back with my armload, it seemed to me that Rosie's usual frenetic consumption and scurrying about with prizes (usually hunks of whey-soaked bread) to eat in a private corner was replaced by something subtly different. More of a stagger than a trot, and she wasn't making a sound. In fact, she wasn't breathing at all. A moment later true panic seemed to set in, and she began to careen around the pen, bouncing off walls, her mouth gaping. My unbelieving mind was having trouble accepting it, but clearly Rosie was choking. Something from her slop must have literally been inhaled this time and was now blocking her windpipe. I felt as helpless as I felt numb (Go ahead and judge me if you want for not administering appropriate first aid...I have no idea what the Heimlich maneuver looks like on a 500 lb. sow, and I wasn't about to shove my hand between those jaws--that I have watched chew up chicken bones like they were Nutter Butters--and down her throat to do a little real-time self-education on the anatomy of Sus Scrofa, its relevance to obstruction-caused asphyxiation, and a few possible emergency remedies).

Seconds later she had collapsed and was alternately thrashing and lying with tensed limbs. She seemed to be nearly out of consciousness, having managed to gasp and exhale only a few strangled pints of air since the choking started. It was clear to me she was going down fast and would soon be dead. I felt I had to try the only thing I knew to do, which was to jostle her, hoping the stimulation would keep her body trying. I don't trust Morris the boar, and usually don't go in with him, but he was busy with his slop and he's been pretty chill lately, so I decided I had to risk it. I climbed the fence and jumped in next to her, jabbing and shoving her back with my boot. She reacted, managing to gasp in a breath, but unable to expel it. After a few repetitions of this routine she began to get a few more breaths and to also expel them. Before a minute had passed, she had the obstruction either fully inhaled or ejected, because she began to breathe steadily, albeit laboriously. Some bright pink blood (lung blood) appeared at her nostrils. She began to return to awareness (for better or worse).

I had no idea now what to do for her. Usually it is best to support an animal in crisis by enabling them to solve their own issues instinctively without distraction, so I just watched her until it occurred to me she might be in shock and could get cold, so I fetched some of the waste hay we have on hand for bedding and tucked it around her. Then Morris, who had finished his supper and hers, began expressing his feelings for her, and I took on the role of space defender for Rosie, registering my request that Morris back off by rapping him briskly on the skull with a garden tool. He got the picture, but then kept forgetting the lesson. I don't know if this was his way of acting out his puzzlement at the event, if she was somehow emitting an attractive pheromone, or if he just couldn't believe his luck that for once she wasn't spurning his attentions, but I did not approve.

After a while she settled in to a steady but labored, rhythmic but rattling breathing pattern, and about that time the rest of the family arrived home. I went and delivered the news. We decided I should check with an animal-wise neighbor, which I did. He put me on the phone with a friend of his well-schooled in animal health, who advised me to give her a chance, but also suggested it was likely she'd inhaled the object, from which event pneumonia was likely to develop. I went and checked on her again, then went in to supper, which Tala had been preparing all this time, oblivious to the drama in the pigpen.

When in the house, I texted some farming neighbors (the folks who run Belvoir Dairy, our source of waste milk) for advice. He said he'd check with his dad, who is a retired agricultural veterinarian. We settled in to Tala's good supper of stuffed winter squash.

Before I could clear my plate, our neighbor called to say he was outside and had heard some thrashing in the pigpen and checked it out and things didn't look too good. "She may be a goner", he said. "Thanks, I'll take a look", I said. She was, in fact, unbelievably, gone. Our sweet, gentle Rosie...

What else does one do? I returned to the house to deliver the news and grab a sticking knife. Janelle came down with me with some more slop to distract Morris, then I climbed in and did my best to bleed her, but clotting had already initiated and I couldn't get much to flow (but being there with her did help Janelle's tears to flow). We stood and looked and tried to think relevant, useful thoughts; largely that was a lost cause. About the best we could do was express the weirdness of this turn of events and try to make a few decisions about meat salvage. My thought was to leave her be until morning, since it was now solidly dark and I thought the cold night would prevent spoilage spreading through the carcass. But we thought we'd better call our more savvy butchering partner and ask his advice.

Upon returning somewhat in a daze to the house, we did leave a voice message and text for him and he soon called back, strongly advising that we remove guts and split the carcass into halves for cooling that same evening, lest residual body heat damage the meat. Did we feel in any condition or position to jump at that suggestion? No. Were we willing to risk the loss of such a vast quantity of excellent pork, and not honor Rosie by trying to make as good a use of the abundance of nourishment on her? No. We agreed we wanted to attempt the process. Mercifully, he offered to show up (masked) as soon as he could arrange it and operate the (neighboring) Hickory Hill Farm tractor in service of the effort, which proved incredibly useful (in other words, we really couldn't have done it without him/it).

With Janelle distracting Morris again with more slop, I lifted one end of one of the panels of the corral; our friend attached a chain to her leg and slid her out under the electric fence tape with the tractor. Reassembling the corral, we then rolled her into the tractor bucket (she almost didn't fit) and brought her up to the threshing floor where we could do the gutting within range of the garage floodlights and keep the whole operation a little less muddy. Our friend "cut out the leaders" (located and loosened two tendons for use as attachment points for hanging) on her hind feet and inserted meat hooks, then we suspended her by the hind feet from the tractor bucket--in the dark, deepening cold of the evening--to wash her body and begin the evisceration. From there on the process was largely familiar from past hog butcherings, even if the circumstances were strange and everything seemed to be three times--literally--its usual size. 

However, we did get one shock: She wasn't pregnant. At all. Not even sort of pregnant. My head started to spin. Who can say what is good and what is bad? We laughed together at the wisdom of the parable.

Once she was gutted and split, we found we didn't savor the thought of trying to heft the halves onto tables to chill overnight. Carrying them to hang on the usual hooks in the garage was out of the question, and we worried the hooks would bend or pull from the wood beam. We ended up positioning one folding plastic table beneath each half and lowering the tractor bucket slowly as we settled them into position, then we unhooked the halves from the bucket and carried the tables in with the halves on them. We wondered if the tables would hold the weight...three sets of hands were not too many, and the tables felt like they might come in pieces if we grabbed the wrong part as a handle.

We gratefully sent our gracious friend off for the evening, agreeing to meet the next morning to cut up the halves. It was after 11:30 when I finally crawled into bed, but Janelle and I both needed some time to voice to each other our amazement and perplexity at the evening's events, and the sudden change of plans for the following day. Luckily, I had been planning on butchering chickens the next day but had made no preparations for it, and she had, for once in her life, nothing specific on her schedule for the day. This is one of many things about this whole catastrophe that went so right.

This morning we jumped right into the work suddenly at hand: cutting up a massive hog that had been a major character in our farm life. The physical process was unremarkable; the volume of meat was bounteous, but between our friend and us we were able to absorb it into our freezers, canning jars, and plans. Meaty bones, ribs, and pork fat portions got spread around to grateful neighbors. Psychospiritually, I am still absorbing it. I know we all will be for a while. As we ate the first delicious portions of her body at supper tonight (Tala's excellent Pork Adobo), it felt like a ceremony marking the first step in the long process of Rosie becoming us.

I feel followed around by a dazed sense of wonderment. This may be the adult version of Terah's questions and expressions: "Why did Rosie have to die?" "It would have been better if it had been Morris." "The good part is that we get to eat Rosie's meat and share it with others." The first night Terah shed a lot of tears and this morning she proudly chopped up 3 whole quarts of meat all by herself. In commenting to me on how Terah was doing, Janelle noted that she feels "Terah is processing Rosie's death very healthily." (Emphasis mine to highlight the wonderful unintentional pun! Score!)

I find myself wondering at the other good things: 1) I happened to take some time at the pig paddock during feeding and so was there when this all transpired - otherwise, we could have come out this morning and found Rosie dead with no clarity on what had happened. 2) We were in an excellent position to deal with the windfall of meat. 3) The weather was good for masked, distanced, outdoor work. 4) We got to try canning pork for the first time (the jar that leaked smells awesome!). 5) We found out a month and a half before we otherwise would have--and avoided all the associated extra planning and effort we assumed we needed to perform--that she wasn't pregnant. Huh. How about that? If she hadn't gone and choked to death, we'd have had months of farm drama and agonizing over what to do about the reproductive failure: Swap boars? Butcher then (a much busier time)? Wait and see if she had just failed to settle on that first cycle?...it could have been a long, annoying saga. Instead, it is this: a convenient--if not downright serendipitous--catastrophe.

Now...among the many questions we will begin to seek answers to in earnest tomorrow: What do we do with Morris?