Excreta Etcetera

And while we’re on the subject of piggy myths, here’s another one …..

Unlike a dog, a pig is generally toilet trained. They prefer to do their business in one place and will return to that place each and every time. So if you have a preferred site simply take it there and your pig will do the rest.

It is certainly true that they…

…. do not mess in their sleeping quarters, which are always clean

But as for the notion that they will only poo in one place outside – Pah!

Being the lucky person who seems to attract the biggest share of poo responsibilities whenever it comes to the unspoken distribution of animal-related chores, the pleasure of trawling the pig field with a small shovel and a large bucket has fallen, inevitably, to me. (Llama poo collection has become the exception to this custom, since Simon has discovered that it can be done in a manly, and hands-off way, using a tractor and link-box.) And believe me, there is no sign so far of our little porkers choosing one (or even three) specific toilet areas. Oh no. Our dissident swine prefer to deposit their poo far and wide, necessitating a lengthy and frustrating process of search-and-destroy, where I wander back and forth trying to recall the various piles I have noted in any given area, whilst dealing with the particular pile I am scooping up at that moment.

It reminds me of childhood games of Pelmanism – only not the straightforward one where cards are laid out in neat rows that provide a structure to assist the memory process, but the spaghetti version, where they are randomly strewn about the floor, like a memory-enhancing version of 52 card pick-up. Perhaps I should mark out the pig field with some sort of grid, and then note the location of the poo piles on a corresponding chart, so that I can work systematically along the rows and down the columns, ticking off collected excrement as I go. Maybe I could even turn this into an exciting game for visitors to the farm. I’m even thinking a competitive version along the lines of Battleships could be worked up, with different sized poos representing different ships in the fleet. Think of the fun to be had when you home in on your opponent’s destroyer!

All in all though, that sort of approach is probably a bit, well…, male. Weird maybe, but certainly systematic. Not really my thing at all. It’s so much more fun to try to take a mental snap-shot of an area of mud, with the poo piles superimposed upon it, each one representing a person, or an animal or some other meaningful thing, and to then make up a story about them, so that I can remember where to find them. Like, “where was that piece of poo that looked like a seahorse? Oh yes, I know….. next to the one that was a small child on a swing, behind the tuft of grass that brings to mind an upside-down-spider wearing clogs.” So much easier to remember than “three across, four down”. I think the star constellations must have been named by women.

I’m sure you can imagine how easily an hour can slip by when one is so thoroughly engaged in such an interesting pursuit. And before you know it, the field is as clean as a clean muddy thing, and the bucket is full and heavy with two week’s worth of Three Little Pigs’ digestive handiwork. And all that remains is the question of What To Do With The Bucket of Poo.

It would seem silly to leave it in the pig field, since the point of cleaning it up was to prevent the spread of nasty little parasitic worms caused by animals feeding on poo-strewn lunch-tables. (That pointless O-level Biology lesson about the life-cycle of a tapeworm was not such a waste of precious teenage time, after all). Sensibly we would heap it in the vicinity of our next year’s would-be vegetable plot, ready for it to do its fertilizing thing. But we still haven’t decided where that will be. The jolly-good plan of moving the pigs to the ‘orchard’ (aka: bit of land with a few straggly plum trees and some lumpy grass) seems somehow less good, now we have seen how they ‘graze’. On the other hand, they have done an excellent job of rooting up the rooty things in their current area, which, with a bit of raking (with a Very Big Rake – probably pulled by a tractor) could so easily turn into a lovely vegetable plot next spring, complete with ready-made fertilizer from all those sneaky, chameleon-like bits of pig poo that I, despite my unquestionably magnificent poo-spying skills, have failed to remove.

So, in the absence of a final decision, the bucket has been left just outside their gate, open to the elements, where it becomes heavier by the day, and attracts the gross and totally-focussed gustatory attention of the puppies, whenever we inadvertently allow them to pass nearby unconstrained. (Sadly, expensive mint-flavoured dog chews do nothing to disguise the tell-tale doggy-breath signs of their verboten gluttony.)

The voracious hounds seem to find it even more attractive than the chicken poo snacks that litter the yard, or the llama poo feast that is growing in the not well-enough hidden corner of our land. I’m beginning to think I should dispense with commercial dog treats and simply carry a bag of pig crap in my pocket for training purposes. I bet they’d respond to the ‘Come!’ command with 100% success, and walk to heel in a way unparalleled in even the Dog Whisperer’s experience of four-month old puppy behaviour.

It’s a thought…..