How high can a pig jump? And what's up with the critters?

Yeah, pigs are cute when they're small

Apparently, pigs can jump pretty high when they want to get out of the pen. And as a note to future pig owners: pigs do not listen to reason and logic, do not respond to "here pig", "here piggy", "come here pig", and no, not even "Soooeeeey!". It is possible, however to coerce a pig to go in a general direction using prunes and cheese, but it is not persuasive enough to get them to go anywhere specific or into somewhere that they don't want to be.

It is good to note, however, that if it is a male pig, you can pretty much count on the fact that he's not going to stray too far from the girls' pen - which is, what we suspect, brought him out of his pen to begin with; the desire to be back in the girls' pen - he's been a little irked since we separated him from them about a month ago. Hey, that's what you get when you push the ladies around; you no longer get to play if you can't play nice.

So, to start over and explain the day as it appeared to me:

I came home from work and was sitting in the living room talking to Old Head, when I noticed that next to him and to the left was the mouse that we have been trying to trap (disguised as a rat), sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, casting glances at me, then the dog food, then me, then the dog food as if he was trying to decide if he could make it there before I could. He decided not to chance it and ran off. "Um, ok, so I keep calling that thing a mouse...it's not", I said. Old Head made a mental note–to add to the already very long and increasing list of things to do–and re-prioritize everything to where it needs to be.

We moved on with the conversation.

About 1/2 hour later, as I turned to look at the computer, I noticed movement in the back yard. "Um...there's a pig...in the back yard."

We headed outside wondering what one does to wrangle a pig back into its pen, but pretty determined (I think) not to chase it around the yard "a-whooping and a-hollerin' as is the most common occurrence. - We're much too old for all that and I no longer have a tribe of kids living at the house that I can tell to go catch that pig.

Image: Flickr.com - iamataman

This is where the "here pig" comes in. Then the prunes. Funny thing is that it was working: Old Head had the offending pig coming up to him and just about eating out of his hand when it was suddenly startled by a family of armadillos crossing the yard. - No, really - armadillos - a family - at THAT particular moment - just as Old Head was getting ready to reach down and grab hold of the pig. So now he was spooked and wanted nothing to do with prunes OR Old Head so he headed off into the high grass of the swamp, er oh sorry - it's called a "lake" - to hide. Yes, because it is better to be in a swamp where the alligators can get you than to be up on dry land with Old Head and some armadillos.

Old Head finally got him back out of the swamp and up onto dry land, but the pig was still freaked so he just kept running around - not going too far away from the girls' pen, but not getting close to Old Head either. Old Head began to get tired of the game so he grabbed a broom and started to try and head it off and corral it into a small area between a fence and the house. This worked and at the moment that Old Head went to grab him, he realized he was trapped and bolted, full speed back out, through Old Head's arms (and to my recollection, dragging Old Head with him a foot or two) and back into the swamp.


New tactic:
Cheese.
Throw pieces of cheese out into the swamp to lure him up onto land. We almost had him cornered last time, if we could get him onto the back porch, we could trap him in and get him there.

There are two gates on the back porch, so we closed one and started the cheese trail through the yard and into the porch.

It was working - he liked the cheese and was following it. But it wasn't enticing enough to get him to go through the gate into the porch. And he went back down to the swamp.

Regroup:
We went back inside and discussed the situation and as I turned in my chair again, to look out the window, (I gotta stop doing that) I saw a raccoon running across the yard toward the chicken coop.

REALLY? Mouse/rat...pig...armadillo...raccoon????? And just two days ago it was a snake. And it's still daylight–what is a raccoon doing running around in broad daylight?  What's up with the critters?

Image: flickr.com - Michael Scheltgen

Old Head ran outside to corral the chickens and get them locked into the pen, but as the day would have it, the chickens were having none of that. Nooo, we don't want to go into the coop - it's still daylight. So the scene: Old Head chasing and telling them to get back in the coop. Me on the other side of the fence trying to scare them with loud noises and uttering indescribable noises in hopes to shake them from their pecking stupor, shaking the fence. The dog barking (who was very happy about this occasion 'cause no one was yelling at him for barking at the chickens - he thought it was great). And finally we were able to round them up, get them into the coop and lock the door.

Back to pig.
I poked around through the cabinets, trying to find something that would be potent enough to attract and guide him into the porch. "What's like candy to a pig?"  Ooo, how about mini marshmallows?

Yes, pigs will follow a trail of marshmallows anywhere. He absolutely loved them. Thought they were the best thing he'd ever tasted. Up, out of the swamp, through the back yard, into the porch, chomping all the way. I kept him distracted with puffy sugar treats as Old Head snuck around behind him, closing the gate and trapping him onto the porch.

Before we could even shout "success!", he realized he was trapped and bolted through the gate on the other side, tearing it off the wall, bending the metal hardware that was holding it onto the posts.

Yes, pigs will follow a trail of marshmallows anywhere - but only once. We reinforced the broken gate by screwing up a piece of plywood over the hole and tried the procedure again. Three times that pig went up to the porch but ran off, freaked out each time remembering what happened before. There was no way that pig was going to fall for that again.

Darkness fell upon the land and the black pig faded into the dark night. He had won this battle. But there was always tomorrow.








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