Out of the Inkwell

Sigh...this thing was clearly bullsheeeet.

When we lived on a small farm in Granby, MA, we raised hogs for several year. The pig pen was at the edge of the pine woods on our property and was quite spacious , allowing the hogs to be the clean animals they really are.

The secret in producing fine pork is what you feed the hogs....naturally. The best meat we ever produced came from pigs raised on corn and fresh excess milk. The worst came from adding slop from the high school cafeteria.

The slop came in garbage cans and it was my job to reach through it taking out paper products, coffee grounds, any bones, etc. that might upset the pigs. It was not among my favorite farm jobs. I much preferred shoveling manure, frankly, than to be up to my armpit in garbage.

We placed these garbage cans up on a wood box about a foot tall near the pig pen and one morning both of them were neatly flipped over and dry as a bone.

Lifting the cans ups there was nothing on the bed of pine needles, which didn't seem disturbed.

The pine needles didn't allow any tracks of any sort to be left.

So what could have consumed all of that slop in one night and be do damn neat about it? A family of bears? A troop of raccoons? Dozens of possums?

Or perhaps it was the Big Foot that Frank Sousa of the local paper wrote about? Nothing like that ever happened again although we continued to use slop.

I wanted to sleep outside by the cans and see what would happen but my parents, anticipating my being mauled by a bear, vetoed that idea.
© 2008 by Gordon Michael Dobbs