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Never No One

One tiny pinkish piglet came to The Quarry Farm after a fierce tumble from a transport truck on I-270 Columbus. We named the little one Nemo, not for the Pixar clownfish but with the Latin word meaning “No One.” She fell from a semi, just one of many piglets that meant nothing on their way to “finishing.” She was found and given shelter by a kind person who drove her to where no one would hurt her ever again.

With a North Carolina tattoo in her ear, road rash, and a healing leg break, Nemo snuggled into our lives until she found her footing. She housebroke easily, following the lead of the dogs. She raced from room to room, confounding the cats until she grew too large to run indoors. She stretched her 700 lb. self outside on the sunny deck and in the shade of trees, often in the company of her potbellied friend Carlton. In winter, she wore chickens on her warm arched back (or they wore her long pale hair on their scaled feet) as she rooted for snowbound roots. In summer, she strained the fence in her quest for wild raspberries and cherries. In spring and fall, she won over visiting school groups and families with her enthusiasm for juicy apples and roasted peanuts.

In the last couple of years, Nemo was less inclined to greet newcomers at the gate. The old leg break slowed her gait from a full-on gallop to a cautious walk. Rather than snuffle-chomping offered treats, she preferred belly rubs that made her breathe big rumbling sighs. She slept in her barn bed more than she grazed, burying her snout in straw and stretching her arthritic bad leg behind her. When she decided not to stand last month, we fed her pans of warm oatmeal, bananas, and feed to combat the bitter cold. Today, she died in that bed under warmed towels. We knew she was going because Buddy the Donkey stood just outside her door, joined by the hens and turkey. They always know and stand watch. They tell us when to come and be present.

Living with a 700 lb. toddler is a challenge, for that is what a grown pig is. They are whip smart beings with the intelligence and emotions of three-year-old humans. Nemo was capable of opening an unchained gate. Fortunately, alarmed strangers confused and frightened her so that she ran home when she heard her name called. For she had a name, unlike her siblings, and every bit as much soul.

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The Great Pumpkins return

I learned this week that a blog post should always tell a story, beginning with, “Once upon a time.”

Once upon a time, there was a four-acre hillside that housed seven potbelly pigs, one potbelly pig, three donkeys, eight goats, two turkeys, nine geese, eight ducks, and an indeterminate number of chickens because that number seem to fluctuate every morning when new roosters appeared. Very mysterious. All of these animals were disgruntled. They didn’t get second breakfast.

No matter how sad they looked when a car passed their fence, when the house people that they just knew could hear them disgruntling didn’t give them their second breakfast, and the door to the hay mow didn’t open no matter how hard they banged on it, food did not appear.

November nights were sometimes warm and sometimes cold. The animals buried into the straw on cold nights and dream that the next day’s breakfast would multiply until suppertime.

On November 7, a car did stop. Only it wasn’t a car. It was a truck. It was a truck pulling a wagon. The wagon was full of pumpkins: big round juicy seed-and-pulp-filled pumpkins. Magic Dave and Jane had arrived! Dave and Jane were the best people in the whole world. When these Great Pumpkins visited, squash rained from the sky. Orange fruits hit the ground and burst open with squashy orange goodness.

The animals ate until their bellies dragged on the ground. The sun warmed the chilly November ground and their full bellies. When evening came, they ate their supper and finished what juicy bits were on the ground for dessert. Donkeys kept watch over the wagon. Pigs snored, dreaming of lip-dripping squash threads. Fowl purred contentedly in their roosts. Goats burped (they always burp.) The people in the house sang songs of praise for peace, delivered by Great Pumpkins.

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A big heart that could be

Nemo the Pig has been featured in this space before. She came to us in 2015 as a tiny shoat. She was scraped, bruised and broken from a fall onto I-270 from a transport truck in Columbus. A kind, determined person rescued her, nursed the piglet’s wounds and brought her to us. For a couple of weeks, we socialized little Nemo by carrying her around to programs in a baby sling. She housebroke easily, although she outgrew the house and was unable to turn around in hallways. At six months of age, the age that young pigs are typically “finished” and loaded into a crowded transport to be “processed,” Nemo was spayed at Ohio State University. For the first few years of her life, she was one of the first farm animal sanctuary residents to greet visitors.

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“I’ve never seen a pig that big,” everyone still says when they see her for the first time. There’s a reason that they haven’t.

Nemo excavated a mud wallow that is so deep and wide that the geese and ducks swim in it when rainwater fills it to the brim. She made friends with Carlton the Pot-bellied Pig, a buddy system that continues to this day. They allow the other pot-bellied pigs, the geese, ducks and the occasional chicken to use their mud wallow.

Seven years on, visitors don’t often see Nemo, especially when the sun is high and the air is hot. Children love to see her, but she doesn’t often run to greet them, even when we mention the word “apple.” I did coax her out to see third-grade students from Ottawa Elementary in May. She walked out of her favorite building, stared across the pasture at the kids waving at the fence, then turned and walked away to her muddy spa. “Not today,” she seemed to say. I explained to the students that, while they could shed their coats and put on sunscreen, Nemo can only protect her fair skin and floppy ears with sparse, fair pig bristles, cool mud and shade.

For those lucky enough to visit on a cool day, Nemo allows a soft jowl rub. She sighs the deep, rumbling sigh that one would expect to emanate from a body such as hers, closes her blonde lashes and rolls over for a belly pat.

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So like ours

I had another post in mind today; two, actually. Today had other plans.

With the press bill planted on my head, I followed the scanner to a semi overturn on Ohio State Route 12. The word was one slight injury, no heavy rescue required.

This was the scene on approach from the west.

 

Truck

 

The driver seated in the ambulance to the left was shaken, with a bloodied forearm, but his fingers were mobile. His boss in Defiance was on speed dial. Pig truck

This was the view from the east, but the screaming gave them away before I rounded the corner.Pigs 7

 

 

 

 

There were 179 gilts (a female who hasn’t born a litter) on the truck. They were less than five months old.

Pigs 4While I don’t have an exact count, I believe that there were fewer than 15 killed outright (I saw seven outside the trailer and know that there were more in the nose that had yet to be removed). Four severely injured animals were dragged from the truck with chains and a fifth, with a dangling right front hoof, was goaded and prodded and slapped out and into a waiting trailer before instructions were given to cease that kind of activity. The two remaining “downed” pigs were left in the shade of the truck and kept cool Pigs 8with water before they were euthanized on the scene. Respondents from the Columbus Grove Volunteer Fire Department climbed on top of the truck and helped to keep them all cool by spraying them with water. This same horror happened earlier this week in Xenia.

I don’t have to explain the pink-paint markings, really.

Pigs 10In fact, I’ll not say anything more.