Pigs are funny. Nobody would argue about that. There are people that collect them. Pictures of them, memorabilia, statuettes, door stops, curtains, pig clocks, wallpaper, pig tails, piggy banks, pigweed, pick stickers, piglets, pig-eyed piebalds and pygmies.
In the homes of a pig collector you are surrounded by pig knick knacks.
But due to my lack of experience, I have never been able to write pig poetry. When I attended veterinary school there were only three pigs west of Scott City, Kansas and they were in the Salt Lake City Zoo. In the world of cowboy music no one has risen to claim the title Ghost Riders in the Sty.
I have held the contention that most cowboy poetry is funny due to that close relationship between humor and tragedy. Workin' livestock is a dangerous and those of us who do it get hurt…a lot! So the only way to deal with the pain is to laugh about it. And you quadruple the chance of injury (and therefore humor) by adding a horse to the equation. Well, most people don't work pigs a'horseback, so you don't have as many wrecks. But where there's a will there's a way.
Ol' Mr. Schneider had a hog operation in central Missouri. He was one of the few in the country to employ dogs on the farm. Specifically, blue heelers.
One afternoon he had gathered two sows to take to the sale. Big ones, in the five hundred pound range. He backed his pickup to the loading chute and pulled the tail gate up. Climbing down in the loading pen, he set the gates and began tickling and tormenting the two sows up the loading ramp. He thrashed and cursed them but they wouldn't go more than halfway. It was then he happened to look up and see his blue heeler, Bruno, sitting in the pickup bed peering down the loading chute.
No comments:
Post a Comment