The worst and best escape artists

We've all seen seen a prison break film. Whether it was in black and white or whether it was some action packed, shoot-em-up-bang-bang flick. I've enjoyed them as much as the rest of us, although this afternoon i had no idea that i would be reliving an escape I thought we had well under control.

Our pen of tops pigs has decreased by two, leaving only one last sow. A black and white devil of a pig, who seem intent on testing our skills at fence building. She has gotten out three times already since we took the others tot he butcher, but always in the fenced pasture area. All three times she managed to break the twine that we had used to keep the gate in place. No matter how many strands we employed: one, two, three. Some how she always managed to get the corner up and squeeze out.

Becoming frustrated we turned to chains. A thinner chain that came with the kit to set up what is left of the old gate and a thicker chain we had employed on our main gate to keep our cows in when we raised them. I thought for sure that using chain we could keep her in the pen. So you can imagine the sound of surprise and anger when I walked out to the back yard to find not only the big sow, but our two younger sows we are planning to breed this next month. I immediately did my best to get the three of them into a position I felt was safe enough that I could go in and wake the slumbering dragon that was my husband. after some choice grumblings I decided that he was coherent enough to leave him to get dressed to go back outside to try to push them back closer to the pens.

While Jacob was using every device he could think of to get the bigger sow into the pasture, I pleaded, and cajoled the smaller pair of sows to follow the ditch bank back along the fence and to the hill that is the dividing line for our property. Which would have been terribly hard if it were not this little flighty sow. If you so much as look at her funny she wheels about and runs away squealing. it amazing to me how much that pigs and kids run parallel in behavior.

After what seems like hours all three were back in their pens, nerves frayed and tempers flared.

Gates fastened as securely as we could manage. I suppose we will find out soon if our skills at jailing are better than that of our convict pigs.