The sheep, pig and chicken are dead, but chivalry isn't

My friend Margaret called yesterday afternoon and asked if there was any way Earl or Erik could come shoot her ram for her. I said sure, and she asked, very politely, if there was any way they could come NOW. So I found Earl, and he went to the barn for his gun and headed right over. All of Margaret's sheep, I learned later, had gotten out, and the ram was being a total jerk, butting Margaret and knocking her over when she tried to lead the sheep back in the barn. He was threatening the kids and the garden, and his rock-hard, made-for-hitting-things-with skull was not responding to Margaret hitting it with a shovel. Now, in addition to being strong and athletic, Margaret is a never-say-die kind of girl and if it had been possible to kill that ram with a shovel, I have no doubt she would have done it. But he wasn't even blinking, and so she picked up the phone to call in artillery.

The first time I was involved in one of these damsel-in-distress-calls-for-prince-to-pull-the-trigger situations was the fall that Earl and I were first married. It was Friday afternoon, I had just gotten home from law school, and Earl and Biggie, Erik's predecessor as Ace Farm Hand, had been chopping corn all day. It was time for chores and someone had to unload the corn in the bunk silo and pack it down, someone had to milk, and someone had to go pick up the pig for the party we were having for Earl's birthday the next day. Biggie was the obvious choice for the tractor work and I was the obvious choice for milking, but I came to the farm with a deeply-entrenched habit of trying to raise men's eyebrows and I volunteered to go get the pig. I was in my sixteenth year of vegetarianism and going to collect an animal for slaughter wasn't on the list of things I did, but it didn't sound like there was all that much to it and I liked the way Earl and Biggie seemed impressed with my offer. Now, that was over nine years ago and I know a few things that I didn't know then. I know, for example, that they were not thinking, "Wow. What a rough-and-tumble girl this is." They were thinking, "Glad I don't have to go to the smelly pig farm and deal with getting the pig in the crate."

As it turned out, the pig barn, which was as nice and well-maintained and as clean as a pig barn can be, smelled horrible. Horrible. It turns out there is a hierarchy of smelliness in the livestock world and I have heard dairy farmers talk about chicken operations smelling bad as a reason not be involved with poultry on any kind of scale, and I have heard chicken farmers talk about pig operations as a reason not to be involved with pigs on any kind of scale. A pig barn, I'm pretty sure, is the end of the line there. I don't have the most sensitive nose and for the most part, as long as something doesn't smell like strawberry-scented candles, I can move on, but this was wretched.

Nevertheless, I steeled myself and went looking for the farmer. I found her at the house, or at least I thought I did. What I really found was the farmer's wife. The difference became apparent as I followed her into the barn and she said, "I thought it would be one of them big guys who was coming. Shit. Why'd they send you? I don't even know what pig is yours or how the hell we're going to get it in the crate."

At the time, I thought for sure that, after I'd been on the farm a few years, I would be able to do all the things Earl could and help anyone who came up the drive. As it turns out, I have yet to reach into a cow, or pull a calf on my own, or load up a trailer full of round bales and expect them to stay loaded. Someday, when the kids are grown, I might do those things, but right now I'm holding down the kid and house fort and if someone comes for some hay and she's not very big and not wearing gloves, I'm thinking, if not saying, "Shit. Why'd they send you?"

Pig Farmer's Wife and I discussed how many people we needed to feed at the party and selected an appropriate sized hog and then we tried to get it into a little transport crate. She had these panel things that were about the size of a truck mud flap that she used to sort them out and she told me where to stand and what to do and the desired pig went into the crate pretty easily. We were both surprised and pleased and were sliding in the gate slat behind the pig when he suddenly went completely nutso. You don't think of a pig in a crate that just fits it as a particularly mobile or flexible creature, but there were limbs flying everywhere, lots of head shaking, and a noise like you wouldn't believe. The pig managed to break through the hardwood slats with his head and then got stuck on the splintered wood. If the pig hadn't been thrashing around so violently, it probably would have been able to straighten up without much trouble, but nothing we could do would get his head unstuck and there we were, with a crazed pig wearing a transport crate and no pig farmer expected back any time soon. She didn't even bother to ask me if I was up for shooting the pig and she wasn't sure where the ammunition was and hadn't ever fired the gun before. We called Earl to see if he could come shoot the pig, but he was in the middle of milking, so the pig farmer's wife called her friend, Wally.

My own call for the big guns was a few years ago in my brother-in-law's chicken coop. We were covering for Berry while he was away at a Special Olympics event and the kids and I went to collect the eggs that the Coop 1 birds were laying on the floor. Coop 1's rooster didn't think I was allowed to touch the eggs and came charging at me, all beak and talon. I ushered the kids out of the coop and reached out the door for a broom. I swatted him, thinking any reasonable five-pound animal would squawk and run away. Instead, almost instantly, I found myself opposite the rooster in a circle the hens had cleared for us. The rooster was strutting about, acting all cocky, flashing his talons, and the hens seemed to be clucking in unison, "Fight. Fight. Fight." I looked at my broom, looked at the rooster and backed out of the coop. He was giving the rooster equivalent of high fives as I shut the door. Earl was down the hall in Coop 4 and I called to him and explained the situation. He returned, promptly dispatched the fucking bird and the last laugh was mine.

And you know, even though Margaret, the Pig Farmer's Wife, and I were not the ones pulling the trigger, I hope word gets out in the livestock community that we are not to be fucked with. We are good wives and friends and neighbors and we have big men with weapons watching our backs.