Pig Escapes!

When I returned from a trip into Blue Hill, Chloe yelled from the barn loft window, "A pig got out!" I thought she was pulling my leg. True, though, a pig had gotten out and, then with Michelle's help, back in. She and the girls had stepped out for a cone of ice cream at the Bagaduce Lunch, and when they returned, there was the biggest pig on the wrong side of the fence looking for a way to get back in. The grass, apparently, is not always greener on the other side. It's my lack of attention to the fence that allowed the breach, be it intentional or accidental. I know I'm supposed to walk the perimeter frequently to check for signs of mischief, and I haven't. Absorbed in other pressing matters and possibly a little too cocky that my pigs are so content that they'd never think of escaping. (After all where else could they get their snouts on five gallon buckets of garlic mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.) Perhaps the biggest pig was just being curious and wound up on the other side. Michelle found a place where she could lift up the bottom of the fence and the pig scooted back under. And just in time too; I hit the jackpot at both the Co-Op and Table and returned with two days worth of tasty stuff.

I'm still waiting for the guy from Marvin to pay us a visit. Michelle is pretty close to having the whole place wired; she's got the phone and internet stuff left and that's about it. Then I can get in there and finish insulating. Since the truth is already out there, I suppose it's time for me to tell about Michelle's freak accident with a drill. The day before Chloe and Hazel returned from RI with my parents, we were both working away when I heard a sort of startled yelp and then a call for help. Michelle was inside drilling holes for wires to pass through the studs and using a rather long speedbore bit to get into a difficult to reach spot when somehow some of her hair got wrapped around the shaft of the spinning bit. When I arrived on the scene, she'd already removed the bit from the drill and was holding it in her hand along with the hair it had torn from the side of her head. The sight was something of a shock for me; she had no idea what she looked like and appeared to be in a state of disbelief about what had just happened. She claimed at the time and still does that it didn't really hurt. A whole patch of hair from above her temple down to her ear and back maybe five inches was ripped out right down to the scalp. She's really, really lucky that hair was the only thing that came away. It could have been much worse. That said, she is missing perhaps a third of her hair on the right side of her head. Since she didn't quite know how to deal with this, she swore me to secrecy and wore a hat or scarf for about a week, and then slowly the news leaked out.