Lora M. Shields, a professor after whom a science building on the Highlands University campus is named, once told a class I was in about some amazing properties of pigs and piglets.<\/p>\n
She said a farmer could fill a pail of milk and let the pig drink it all, then lift that same pig into the same bucket and even have a little room to spare. It took some of us a while to catch on.<\/p>\n
I confess I was one of the gullible, having been raised in town and believing only that all hogs are tiny, cute and cuddly. The just-ended Kiss-a-Pig promotion, that netted $6,186 to help Samaritan House, contradicts some of that tiny, cute and cuddly mythology.<\/p>\n
Optic staffer Mercy Lopez took a photo of this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s winner, Mike Melton, the dark horse in the race, preparing for some osculatory activities on the hog. Melton got to take home the bacon, figuratively. But was the receiver of the kiss tiny? Cute? Cuddly? What the gold medal winner of the Rio Gallinas version of the Olympics kissed is a far-squeal from the adorable cartoon characters we enjoyed as children.<\/p>\n
Em Krall won the silver, with Tom McDonald taking the bronze. In Krall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it time to tell her the contest is over? She even hustled votes and donations at Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final performance of Over the Edge V, where she accompanied the choir.<\/p>\n
McDonald and Krall made much of their own origins, Arkansas and Iowa, respectively, but does mere geography qualify them for advanced placement as Fellows in the Institute for Advanced Porcine Studies?<\/p>\n
As one who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been up close to pigs (albeit not willingly), I offer some observations and a bit of background:
\nDuring my wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time as a teacher in Anton Chico, years ago, one of her students asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is your husband a Chicano?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nBonnie said that indeed I am.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can he butcher a pig?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Heavens no!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ooh, then he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a gringo. Get rid of him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Well, 40 years have passed since that exchange, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still together; Bonnie has neither demanded that I butcher a pig, nor have I expressed any sizzling desire to do so. And besides, when did the evisceration of hogs become the bailiwick of a particular ethnic group?<\/p>\n
Though I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even identify the business end of a slaughtering tool, presumably a knife, I nevertheless have a wee-wee-wee bit of experience and almost can claim a sty in my eye.<\/p>\n
When my in-laws were younger, Stanley Coppock raised hogs, sheep, cattle, chickens, sheep and goats. My knowledge of pigs was limited to children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stories about the three little ones, and I believed the only sound hogs made was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oink.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, listen carefully, if you get the chance. When they feel threatened, they cry \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wolf!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and they all scatter. I am not making this up. If they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hurt, we dab on oinkment.<\/p>\n
But back to this saga: Some lines in the musical \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oklahoma!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d suggest a hog\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s social status: Pet cats feel superior to humans; dogs feel inferior to humans and pigs consider themselves equals.<\/p>\n
As in virtually every species, except centipedes, the young are cute and cuddly. That includes pigs.<\/p>\n
One observation is that pigs appear never to stop growing. Most of the 40 or 50 hogs on Stanley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ranch were penned up. Occasionally, he allowed a sow to free-range, and she would even lie on their side to be scratched and petted.<\/p>\n
The closest I got to hogs was in helping Stanley \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ring\u00e2\u20ac\u009d them. A huge, possibly 600-pound boar needed a ring attached to its snout to prevent rooting, for with little effort, a pig can uproot a fence post, a milk wagon or a city-slicker.<\/p>\n
Stanley used a Coppock Cobble to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ring\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the pigs. It was simply a piece of baling wire made into a noose that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d slip behind the boar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s molars. The pig pulled in the opposite direction. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d tug on the hog-ringer tool while Stanley used a pliers-like tool to attach a ring around the snout of the pig.<\/p>\n
The animal emitted a squeal that was never equalled until the Grateful Dead came along. But seconds after being custom-fitted with this ring, the animal enjoyed that hoggian status symbol.<\/p>\n
While the folks were away one time, two sows decided to deliver their litters at the same hour. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never seen a hog birth (or any other kind), and was fascinated by how each of about a dozen piglets made its way to the nursing station.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realized that after the last piglet had arrived we could actually determine the birth order, based on their relative sizes. And we learned that the sow in the adjoining pen didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even grunt when adopting a few new nieces and nephews. You see, Sow No. 1 delivered twice as many as her next-pen sister, and it was possible to make a couple of transfers, to even the load.<\/p>\n
That exhausts the totality of my advanced studies in swineology. But back to the Kiss-A-Pig All-Pro World Championship. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wondering why nobody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made mention of the considerable literary and scientific debt mankind owes to these domestic mammalian quadrupeds.<\/p>\n
Next year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s promotion could be designed along more litter-ate themes, and the contest could ham it up or even make some people bristle by introducing the names of people and of some classics that come to mind.<\/p>\n
Just to name a few: Hamlet, Sir Francis Bacon, Little Lard Fauntleroy, Albert Einswine, Pigrim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Progress, Lard Jim, Stylas Marner, The Scarlet Litter, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, The Adventures of Tom Sowyer, Catcher in the Rind, Ivanhog, Frankenstyn, Pigmalion and Lard of the Flies.<\/p>\n
These are merely suggestions. Please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sooey me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lora M. Shields, a professor after whom a science building on the Highlands University campus is named, once told a class I was in about some amazing properties of pigs and piglets. She said a farmer could fill a pail of milk and let the pig drink it all, then lift that same pig into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":958,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions\/958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}