When pigs flyNovember 12th, 2007 @ 5:01 am
My younger brother joined the Future Farmers of America when he was a sophomore in high school. I was long graduated by this time and living it up at college, so I never saw him walk the halls of his high school wearing his bright blue FFA jacket with his cowboy boots and Wranglers.
It’s probably better this way. I would have made fun of him. I’m mean.
No really. I am.
His junior year project for FFA was to raise a pig. A baby pig was purchased (by the parents), fed (with feed paid for by my parents), stored (in my parents horse stalls) and trained (by my brother) with the intent of being sold at auction at the end of the school year.
All proceeds would go to my brother.
I happen to be home from college the week of the farm auction. Maybe it was Spring Break. Maybe I had already graduated at this point. Who knows? The point is that I met The Pig. By this point he was full grown. Ever seen a full grown pig? They are huge. And not as cute as a baby pig.
Also by this time my brother and my family had become quite fond of The Pig. It wasn’t unusual to see my brother or sister walking it around the yard or combing its fur (is it called fur?). I guess part of the FFA project was that my brother had to train the pig on the correct ways to be shown. So basically it had to walk behind him and respond when he shook a cane it it.
Or something like that. Whatever. I’m mean.
I remember watching out the kitchen window and seeing my brother and his friend Jeremy walking their pigs around and around the yard. (Yes, Jeremy would bring his pig over for little piggy playdates. Life in a small town is very exciting.) My brother and Jeremy were very serious about training their animals up right. They wanted to do well in FFA. Especially now that my brother was an official FFA officer and would be going to the official FFA convention the next year. He was very, very official.
It came time for the auction. The house was all in a frenzy. This was the big time. My brother packed up The Pig in the horse trailer, along with his favorite water dish and his blanket and they all headed to town for the auction. I couldn’t go. I was too busy watching TV. Or washing my hair. You know, whatever.
I looked out the window hours later when I heard my dad’s truck pull into the lane. My family climbed out the back seat and I saw my little younger brother walk slowly, head hung, into the house while the rest of them unloaded all the gear. Of course The Pig wasn’t with them. He had been sold. My brother had done a great job in raising and training The Pig and he had fetched a very high price.
So why was he so upset?
While my brother was busy getting The Pig ready for the auction he hadn’t thought about what would happen after The Pig was auctioned off.
The Pig was set to be slaughtered later that day.
My brother was very upset.
My parents weren’t prepared for his reaction to losing his pig. They had assumed that since he was seventeen years old he would have thought more about this and been prepared for the natural progression in the food chain.
Alas, he was not. He was very, very sad.
We all tried to cheer him up the best way we knew how. Which meant we reminded him of all the awesome things he could buy with the money he made selling The Pig. We made light of the situation. We teased him for crying over a pig.
And while he eventually started to smile, he was upset about this for quite some time. I often wonder if my brother drove to the auction grounds later that night and tried to rescue The Pig. I can just picture him trying to sneak into the stall and shove a pig twice as big as he is into the back of his old Chevy pick-up truck.
While at my parents house last weekend I walked back to the horse stalls with Babboo and was reminded of The Pig. When my brother showed up a few hours later with his pregnant wife and daughter I didn’t bring it up.
I didn’t want to see him cry.
————
So tell me, do any of you have a sad animal story like this?
Back in the Day · They're just my family
LaLa
said,
November 12, 2007 at 10:27 am
Even though that was a sad story, you still made me smile.
At one stage when I was a kid we kept losing cats. Two got cat napped (can you believe it? There was a cat napper in our town) and then one ran away.
Mum came home a couple of months later with a teeny, tiny grey kitten from the shelter, we must have had that kitten for about 3 days when a friend of mine noticed that it had pussy paws. Because we lived in a big old sleepy country town at that stage and EVERYTHING shut at 5pm Mum said she would take the kitten to the vet the next morning. The kitten died that night. My second eldest brother and I were almost immune to the sadness at that stage and just wanted to check the body out (I believe we may have even have dug it up a couple of weeks later because we were morbid children), but my eldest brother sat at the table and wept. Second brother and I were quite taken aback by this behaviour and questioned Mum at length. Mum told us to leave him alone.
Of course, we just teased his mercilessly. I still feel a bit bad about that.
LaLa
said,
November 12, 2007 at 10:33 am
him. not his.
Stephanie
said,
November 12, 2007 at 12:44 pm
About two years ago, my husband was mowing the yard. He looked down and noticed something in a little hole in the yard. It was two little wild rabbits. Since he was a wildlife undergrad major, he knew that the mother was likely not to come back to the babies and that cats in our neighborhood were likely to eat them. So he decided to bring them inside. Not that you are suppose to do that with wild animals.
They were itty bitty. Smaller than the palm of my hand. We had to feed them with a medicine dropper mixture of condensed milk, an egg yolk and some other crap. The husband was in love. In the mean time, I had been harassing about getting a dog or something like a real pet. Instead, we get Mr. Bunny Rabbit. Yep, creative name, I know.
I ended up hating the rabbit. He stunk. He wouldn’t let you touch him, since he was wild and all. He pissed out the side of his $60 cage thingy. He shit out the side of it too. He ate lots of carrots and hay. Just gross.
So I decided he could go out on the back deck. This was way better than inside the house for me.
Until he died.
The husband said that it was probably a heat stroke from being outside. In my head, I thought damn rabbits are suppose to be outside how would one or 18 warm/hot southern days kill a rabbit.
I honestly thought the husband was going to cry when he buried it in the backyard.
Since the rabbit wasn’t tame or anything, it wasn’t really a pet to me. And we got a real pet, a dog about a month or so later.
Durga
said,
November 12, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Aww that’s so sad.
I’m envious of these sibling stories as I am an only child. Plus I never had a pet…except for pet sitting sometimes for ppl we knew.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t a big fan of pets. I should have tried though. Would have been a good character building experience for me.
super des
said,
November 12, 2007 at 3:06 pm
When I was a kid, I had a parakeet named Jicabob. I went on vacation once to visit extended family, and when I came back, Jicabob was gone. My mom said she had let him go. I cried and cried. A coupla years ago I was talking to my sister about it (I”m still upset) and she said “didn’t mom tell you what really happened?” and I put my hands over my ears and said lalalalalala. Apparently I’ve been living under a delusion for 20 years, don’t take it away now.
I still don’t know what really happened.
Anna
said,
November 12, 2007 at 4:47 pm
For some reason I have a lot of sad, yet funny, stories regarding pets. The first one that comes to mind is when I was four years old and had a pet parakeet named Joey. It was time for a family vacation so we left Joey with my aunt who also had a pet parakeet. The one difference between the two birds was that Joey had his wings clipped while my aunt’s bird’s were not.
My aunt often let her bird out to fly around the apartment. No problem for her bird and it really shouldn’t have been for Joey either. Except for the fact that my aunt left the house with them flying about and forgot to make sure the toilet seat cover was down. Poor Joey, with his less than stellar flying skills, fell into the toilet and couldn’t get out. He ended up drowning.
I came home to a dead bird in a shoe box (my aunt was not one to beat around the bush - had it been my mom, a new bird would have been purchased and passed off as Joey). I was devastated.
My mom and I held a very solemn funeral for poor Joey and buried him in the back yard of our apartment complex. Even now, some 20 odd years later I think about that bird when I drive by that old apartment.
Operation Pink Herring
said,
November 12, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Joel grew up on a farm, and they had all kinds of animals. One day a Fluffy the baby sheep would disappear and surprise! They’d have lamb for dinner. He says his parents were really good about keeping a well-defined line between the farm animals and the pet animals, but I could not have handled that. It makes me want to cry just to think about it.
My only personal story is that there was a feral cat that used to come around the beach where I worked as a lifeguard. The boss HATED “Marley”, even though he kept a freaking pet rooster at another time, which was so annoying that the neighbors got together and plotted to kill it. Marley wasn’t bothering anyone, but he decided she had to go. She evaded him for a long time, but he finally set up one of those humane traps and caught her in it. It was a really quiet night at the beach when we found her trapped in there, and seeing her terrified in a cage broke my heart. So I let her out, and all the staff there that night swore we wouldn’t break the code of silence when we were questioned (the boss had already seen her in there and was just waiting until closing time to come and get her).
I don’t know if he caught her again because he set the trap up far out in the woods where we couldn’t go check on it without being noticed… but I like to think she was too smart to go near that trap again, and that she’s living happily somewhere.
David McNelis
said,
November 12, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I had a pet duck. Its name was Jacqueline. It is a bizarre story, and I think I’ll cover it on Thursday now…thanks for the idea!
Rachel
said,
November 12, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I found a, probably, one-day old puppy in my back yard a few years ago. I brought it in, bottle fed her until she was old enough for puppy food, named her Stinkerbelle (Belle for short), started getting her her shots and everything. She ended up getting sick before all of her shots were complete. She was around 5 months old or so. She passed away. She is buried in the back yard of my old house.
The new owners do not know that.
Kim
said,
November 12, 2007 at 7:16 pm
When I was in first grade, I volunteered to take our class gerbil home for the weekend. I failed to get permission from my mother. It was exiled to the garage for the weekend. Did I mention it was probably January or February and pretty frickin’ cold? I prayed that it wouldn’t die because I would have been humiliated to take a dead gerbil back to school. It lived and I never volunteered again.
A few years ago, my daughter brought home a tadpole. She named it Elvis. It lived in a fishbowl in her room until it started to develop frog-like tendencies. Then we moved the bowl to the kitchen so I could keep an eye on it. We (and by “we” I mean Ifinally let it go in a neighborhood lake because I just knew I’d wake up one morning and it would have disappeared from the bowl and be hopping around my house.
Kim
said,
November 12, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Whoops. Edited.
We (and by “we” I mean I)finally let it go in a neighborhood lake because I just knew I’d wake up one morning and it would have disappeared from the bowl and be hopping around my house.
Danielle
said,
November 12, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Baby pigs are pretty cute. Grown up pigs…not so much. And they’re awfully stinky. My aunt and uncle used to raise pigs every year for slaughter and they would name the pigs “ham” and “bacon”, and other porky food names. I guess that way you don’t get too attached to “Babe” or “Wilbur”.
Cindy
said,
November 12, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Living on a dairy farm all my life, I knew from an early age that we were on top of the food chain. After my dad would send a steer to be butchered, he would always remind us at the dinner table who we were eating.
Christar
said,
November 12, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Sad story! I would have been sad too!
My uncle used to have a ton of Finches, and some of them would lay eggs, but most of the time they would either break the egg before it could hatch, or kill the baby before it could progress. My uncle always tried to take care of the babies they kicked out of the nest.
One day when I was over there, he showed me the itty bitty baby bird and asked me if I wanted it. I of course said yes (I was about 13~years~old) and he provided me with formula and told me that I needed to feed the baby bird every two hours.
She (I’m assuming it was a girl, but I honestly didn’t know) was so cute and about the size of your pinky finger from the top knuckle. I took such good care of her, making sure to feed her every two hours, and giving her water with a syringe. I even got up every two hours to feed her in the middle of the night. Lucky for me it was in the middle of the summer, so no school.
Like I said, I took such good care of her and loved her so much. After having her for about two weeks, tragedy struck. I woke up in the morning to realize my alarm clock never went off the night before, not once. I hadn’t gotten up at all because of it. I jumped out of bed and ran to check on her, and she was lifeless. I started bawling and called my mom who was at work and told her I thought she was dead. My mom came home because she could hear how upset I was and said that we would take her to the vet to see what they could do.
Trying to make me feel better, she told me that the vet was able to save her but we’d have to leave her with them for a few weeks. When my mom went and picked her up, she looked like a normal grown finch.
Later I found out that Tiny, as I named her, had really died and my mom just told me all that to make me feel better. To this day, I still get sad whenever I see finches and think of my cute littler bird.
Heather
said,
November 12, 2007 at 7:48 pm
When I was younger we found a baby bunny outside. I can’t remember if the cat had it or had killed it’s mother but either way it ended up in a kennel in our house.
One day it jumped from this kennel, we had it on a TV tray to avoid the cats, and fell to the ground. From then on it walked sideways. The fall apparently screwed up something in it’s equalibrium and it died a few days later.
We still talk about Peter Rabbit at our house.
Want another? I’ve got lots. We lived on a farm and were continually trying to save animals….
SJ
said,
November 12, 2007 at 8:09 pm
My brother had a cow named Boomer on their farm that they raised and eventually took off to slaughter.
That’s all I can think about in regards to your brother and his pig.
I was a city girl, cut me some slack.
Jackie
said,
November 12, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Funny you should ask. I just told someone my story earlier today. Seems I tell it a lot during this time of year.
When I was in second grade, my dad brought home a baby goose from his friend’s farm. Fluffy lived in our Barbie house, swam in our bathtub, and played in the yard with my sister and me. That is, until Fluffy started growing up and getting aggressive.
Fluffy was a goose, a wild animal, and he started attacking the family. So my dad loaded him in the truck and took him to the “petting zoo.”
Days went by and I asked to see Fluffy in the zoo. Finally, I was told he met a girl goose, they got married, and flew away to have goose babies. I didn’t think anything of it until Thanksgiving.
My mom was carving the Thanksgiving bird when I started asking questions. “Does a quail have white and dark meat? What about a chicken? Where is the white meat on that turkey?”
I sized up the size of the bird and the size of my pet goose, and started crying. I was sent to my room so I wouldn’t ruin it for my sister and cousins.
For days after, I asked my mom if we ate Fluffy. She said no, until one day. “You know damned well that was your goose. Don’t tell your sister!”
I haven’t eaten turkey or goose since then. I won’t eat chicken if it’s on the bone. And I kept the secret from my sister for almost 10 years. Wow, that was quite the trump card to play during some silly teen girl arguement. And, 10 years later, I was punished for telling her.
Becky..Absent Minded Housewife
said,
November 13, 2007 at 5:41 am
I spent some time with some drunk FFAers (I was not drunk) at a convention and promptly won all their money playing blackjack. There was a lot of coffee drinking at those conventions.
I raised two pigs. I didn’t auction them however. Named one Breakfast and one Dinner. They were delicious as I recall.
janet
said,
November 14, 2007 at 2:35 am
you are such a great storyteller, and this is one of my very favorite hola, isabel stories.
when I was little (like 2) we had two cows, named T-Bone and Porterhouse. (My dad is heartless, apparently.) I think they were sold at auction and killed, but I was too young to know about things like that. How sad for your brother though!
Kyleen
said,
November 15, 2007 at 1:06 am
So I work with 4-H…the kids I work with - not all of them - raise livestock (pigs, sheep, steers and goats). They sell them off each year at auction. They are able to start showing when they reach the age of 5. Alot of kids start then and go all the way until they are 19, which means they can fund most of college with their livestock sales. Who knew a goat can go for $1600 bucks!!? Seriously…anyhow off track - the saddest is when the little kids have to leave the show right after the auction before we load the animals up to take the ride to the slaughter house. The saddest is when a little girl came back to tell her sheep good night and the sheep had gone. We had to explain that he took a trip. It was sad. She was happy though when she got her check for 800 bucks!
Various rumblings from a Dink » Blog Archive » I had a pet duck.
said,
November 15, 2007 at 1:40 pm
[...] This isn’t one of those memories I think of very often, but after Hola, Isabel, spent a post talking about her brothers FFA pig, I couldn’t get it out of my head, and thought it might make for interesting reading. And you parents out there, remember, your kid can get attached to a duck or a pig, as much as it can a cat or a dog. [...]
Zandria
said,
November 16, 2007 at 2:17 am
That is such a sad story! But also sweet. Your poor brother.
Parenting Sites 411 » Blog Archive » You Need to Read - November 16
said,
November 16, 2007 at 4:01 pm
[...] “When pigs fly” from hola, isabel. She always writes the most interesting posts. This one was about a pig her brother raised for FFA years ago and how her brother got rather attached to his pig. Naturally, he was devastated when the pig was sold and he learned the pig would be slaughtered without delay. A very touching story. [...]
angela
said,
November 17, 2007 at 2:04 am
Did you know that I used to be in FFA? And oh yes, I still have my sexy jacket. Nick actually borrowed my older brother’s FFA jacket one year so he could wear it for Halloween.
By the way, I had no idea pigs could be trained. Who knew.