my life as a pig farmer

Our family is famous for good ideas gone awry. We will have a plan, a good one, but there is always some detail that we have overlooked which brings everything to a screeching halt. For instance, there was the time we became pig farmers…
My former husband Gene (may he rest in peace) came in one evening from a trip to Idaho with his ‘partners’. Don’t ask me what they were partners in, but it was 50/50 all the way! He burst through the door and announced to the family that he had a sure fire money maker which would make the family fortune solvent again. He led us outside to the back of the pickup and there, in a cage full of straw were 2 small pigs. ‘We can fatten them up, then sell one and put the other one in the freezer!’ Gene explained as he lifted the cage gently onto the porch. The kids were aghast until I started naming pork products: bacon, ham, sausage, chops… soon we were all in agreement about the fate of the little pork-ettes. So, we made a makeshift sty and I started reading on how to fatten pigs. After about 6 weeks, we noticed that they were only slightly larger, and not exactly fattening up. I called a friend of mine over to see what I was doing wrong. She took one look and started laughing. ‘Those are not regular pigs, they are pot-bellied pigs, they’re not the eating kind!’. Just our luck! So we tried to sell them, but this was right after the ‘pig as a pet’ fad had passed and we couldn’t even give them away! All the while, I had to feed them and clean up after them – and they may have been miniature, but the BLEEPING smell was massive! This went on for about 2 months. Then one day, we pulled in the driveway from church, and there stood the pigs on the porch. They had broken out of their enclosure and were munching on my flower box contents. The kids piled out of the car amid shouts of ‘We’ll catch ‘em!’ and rushed the porch. But this is what happened; ever see birds in flight, how they all turn at once and go in a new direction? That is what those pigs did – at the speed of light! They were running so fast their little hooves were just a blur! And they were screaming their lungs out!! High pitched, shrill – sounded like I was murdering an entire pre-school class! They were weaving and bobbing, around and around the house, the kids right behind them laughing and yelling. One of the boys yelled for me to get the hammock and use it as a net. I grabbed it from the tree and stood at the corner of the house. Here came the 2 little race horses, and I dropped the net, but they were so fast I could NOT let go of the net quick enough to catch them! This went on for about 15 minutes, then they did an extra turn around the property to gain momentum and shot out the driveway and down the street… screaming like banshees, with all my kids in hot pursuit. The neighbors who had all come out to be eyewitnesses to whatever I was doing to my victims now joined in the pursuit, and after about half an hour they were rounded up and returned to my loving care. We couldn’t eat them and couldn’t find a buyer for them, so I was at my wits end! Two weeks later, we returned from church - again - and found the pig pen was empty. It was still intact, but someone had purloined our pigs! My son Andrew sized up the situation and said ‘Someone has stolen our pigs – Mom, you need to call the police!’ I thought a minute and then said ‘I will, son, I will… in a week or so.’ The next morning I placed the large bag of Pig Feed out by the curb with a note on it that read ‘You Forgot This’. It was gone when I returned home from work. From then on we had a new family motto: never invest in anything that eats.