Walking the Pigs

When Anne was in high school, she was a member of FFA – Future Farmers of America.  She had a purple jacket and went around all the time saying something about “Gold, Corn Gold!”  She raised pigs and showed them at the livestock show.  I think she did this for about 3-4 years.  As part of her duties, she had to walk them to make sure they would get exercise.  Every day after school, she would come home, get her pig stick and head out the back door to walk the pigs.  We had a big open field next to our house.  She was supposed to walk them out in that field to the end and back.  There were two things that could potentially go wrong each day.  First, the pigs could get on the road and get run over.  Second, they could get in the pen with the horses and get kicked.  On an average day, Anne was quite sure that both of these things were going to happen and that would be the end of her pigs.  Walking the pigs was a very dangerous but exciting proposition.  She would head out the back door, and then about five minutes later (like clockwork) she would come running back to the house screaming frantically that the “pigs are on the road!! the pigs are on the road!!!”   If we didn’t take the situation seriously enough by immediately getting up to help her, she would threaten us by saying, “You don’t give a crap!! You just want them to get killed!!!” We would go out there and the pigs would be out by the barn, just grazing, about 50 yards from the road.  They must have taken a couple of steps in the direction of the road and that was enough to get Anne excited.  She liked the drama of it.  Either way, it was always very entertaining each day to see what kind of trouble she would get in with her pigs.  It kept Anne entertained, the pigs got exercise, Anne got exercise, and we could count on a few good laughs.