My morning run, pre-smoke and dead things.

Howdy Neighbor

Oh hey there, new Texan neighbor. Welcome to the hood boonies. Thanks for making the ultra-cool decision to burn massive debris piles of newly felled trees (from all your lovely meadow making) on this super dry and windy morning. As I looped back toward home and turned into the breeze, it made my morning run extra special. Even more so than the already ridiculous hotness and carcass-littered backroad already had.

Signed, Your coughing gagging snotty-nosed slow-running sissy pants neighbor.

Pigs Gone Wild

So the other day as Christie and I were en route to a luncheon at a friend’s house we passed by a field where some new owners had decided to create a pig wallow. They’ve ingeniously re-used old shipping containers (turned upside down with large openings cut through) as covered homes for the little piggies. I thought they were all adorable. Christie notices entirely different things than I do. Her reaction: “What a complete mess those pigs have made of that beautiful field. Note to self.” OK, so I guess a couple weeks ago when we asked Courtland if he wanted pigs and he was all “Yes, please,” and big grins – we can scratch that. Hopefully the two-year-old won’t remember whether we said pigs or chickens. We already have chickens, so we’re covered.

At any rate, this whole pig observation triggered my recall of an article I’d read a few weeks back in our recent issue of the Oxford American. So, this is my recap of the piece on wild boar hunting in Texas. And I want you to know that I’m doing this without even so much as glancing at the article before I write this because I didn’t have that luxury in the car during my recap for Christie and I want to see how ridiculous my memory truly is.

So, this guy, a hunter who has learned to hunt with Native American attitude (thank the Great Spirit, only kill when necessary, use everything), is invited to go to Texas and “hunt wild boar,” but basically the invitation is more like “Come on down, grab an automatic weapon and kill you some wild hogs, son.”  At first it sounds really off-putting, right? But he gets down there and the local yokel is talking about the crazy Russian Boars who were introduced to the area years ago and how they’ve intermingled with the local pig population to create some super-charged neo-hybrid freaky-deaky pigs. These said interbred pigs are apparently running amok, tearing up crops and fields, eating livestock and stealing small children in the night (OK, I made that bit up). Basically, they’re wreaking all sorts of havoc in this large rural area. All in a day’s boaring – hee hee.

So, after hearing all this and seeing some damage these psycho pigs are doing, this writer guy is all, “Lemme at ‘em!” So he takes this automatic assault gun thingy (though I do read Garden & Gun, I know very little about actual guns, but I’m quite certain that this one was big, scary, and should probably be used only by trained military) and hauls off with this local yokel in his truck into the woods. They do some hunting, but mainly they are shooting and killing – even taking out sows and piglets. I know we’re not supposed to feel sad about it because of all the aforementioned havoc, but here I am a month later still thinking about this little piglet running and squealing with delight one moment and then riddled with AK-47 bullets the next. Doesn’t seem fair.

Christie asks me what the point of my story is and I have to admit, other than it really sticking with me, I don’t have a clue where I was headed in vomiting my interpretation of the piece.

But I’ll share it with you. Here’s the link to the story because I am 100% sure that my recap is completely riddled with musings based on incorrect facts that my crap memory generated. And, the bottom line is, it was a good piece because I’m still thinking about it.