ROPIN’ A SOW
by
Mary Bursell Maupin
It was late February and the sun was shining brightly after 18 straight days of rain. The dirt pile from the leach line our son and his hired hands had dug was a pile of mud three feet high. The ditch, thirty seven feet long, still had muddy water at least six inches deep.
But no matter, the day was warm and I could hang clothes on the line and air out the house. The hired hands came, knowing our son would have to be away most of the day and were hard at work doing what he had laid out for them to do.
I was hanging the last load of clothes on the line when I caught a glimpse of a sow running toward the front yard and as I turned I saw Neal, one of the hired hands running after her trying to turn her before she got to the road.
Neal was a college student majoring in Police Science at the near by University. He looked more like a basketball player with his six foot six inch frame and muscles like a prize fighter. This was the first farm job he had ever had being raised in a big city, but he was willing to learn.
At the end of the yard, observing the barrier standing before her, the sow stopped and turned back toward the house. Coming up the driveway she saw the garage door open and started towards it. But seeing all the stuff inside, she made a choice of going in a different direction around the house.
In the mean time, Max, the other hired hand, came running towards me with our son’s lariat whirling over his head.
Startled at the sight, I asked him what he was going to do with the rope. He yelled back over his shoulder, “I’m gonna’ rope a sow.” I then asked him where was my Australian Shepherd. He said, “She’s guarding the other two sows at the gate of the pig barn.”
Max was the grandson of one of our neighbors, just recently discharged from the Marine Corps. He was about five foot nine also with a muscular build. The two hands looked like Mutt and Jeff standing side by side.
He met the sow at the corner of the garage where the ditch had been dug. The sow was in the middle of the mud pile wiggling herself across while she pushed into the soggy mess with her hind feet. When she finally ejected herself from the mud pile she carried a lot of the mud with her. As if it were just another day, she headed straight for my garden that had been plowed before it started raining.
I yelled at them to let her walk and try to keep her next to the fence and she would find her way back to the gate on her own.
But having a mind of her own, she wandered off the fence and towards the cow lot. There was a little elevation in the ground along that strip of land where all the machinery was parked. Tractors, combines. planters, etc. All that was between us and the barns and she was headed that way. Just as she got even with the machinery, my dog Queenie came bounding through the middle of it and right towards the sow. The sow took off towards the cow lot with Queenie right behind her and all three of us calling Queenie to stop. Finally Queenie did stop but the sow kept going at a high rate of speed. She hit the corral fence of four strands of barbed wire and two strands of electrical. I saw the Charger throw off sparks when the wires were severed. She didn’t stop until he bumped against the wall of the barn on the other side of the corral. It was if the sow didn’t see it coming. She staggered a bit before getting her balance.
By this time all three of us were at the hole she made in the fence. Neal said he would get her if Max let him have the lariat. Max and I stood at the hole in the fence while Neal plowed through the soggy muck of the corral to stand up next to the hay barn where it was a bit dryer.
The sow was a little nervous and began pacing around the cow lot in a circle. Several times she came close to Neal but each time she shied away just as he was about to throw the rope over her head. None of us had made any noise and the sow became calmer and slowed her pace around the corral. On about the fifth of sixth try Neal had his chance and slipped the noose over her head. Neal didn’t realize that her neck and head were almost the same size and when she felt the rope hit her neck, she whipped around 180 degrees and bolted for the other end of the corral. He had the rope coiled around his hands so it wouldn’t slip off and when that three hundred fifty pound sow hit the end of the rope, two hundred twenty pound Neal flew off his feet and landed in the middle of the mushy stuff in the corral. A six foot six inch frame drug a lot of mushy stuff across the corral when the sow stopped.
Max and I couldn’t help him up because we didn’t want to get it on us too and we couldn’t laugh either. So we let him find his own way to a standing position. When he was up right he saw the little gate that he could let the sow out into her own back yard. In the mean time, Max went to open the gate where the other two were still being guarded by my dog Queenie.
After the episode was over and the pigs were in their barn, Neal and Max were hosing off at the hose bib that was used to flush out the pig barn.
I heard Neal ask Max,”Doesn’t this water get any warmer? I’m freezing.”
Max replied with a snicker in his voice,”The pigs don’t object when I spray them. Why should you? I’m not letting you ride home in my car smelling like a pig sty.”
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