Killing Pigs
When Gorge Orwell (Eric Blair) sat down to write his masterpiece Animal Farm he brought to the project a lifetime of practical experience of farms and farming.
“Animal Farm might have been consigned to the dusty attics of history long ago had Orwell’s rendering of his animal protagonists not been so on point and credible — the sheep lemming-like, the pigs intelligent and top of the pecking order and the aged donkey, Benjamin, stubborn and knowing.
They are rooted in Orwell’s real farming experiences and they demonstrate his profound and deep-seated understanding of animal character traits, behaviour and husbandry requirements. ‘Major was already ensconced on his bed of straw… He was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut,’ Orwell writes with a farmer’s knowledge at the beginning of the book.
‘My father was very observant of everything, and would quite quickly absorb the various characteristics of farm animals and subsequently pigeonhole them in his mind as to how clever or not they appeared to be,’ reflects Richard Blair, the son Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair) adopted aged three weeks in 1944, with his wife, Eileen.
‘I guess in Animal Farm, he started with the pigs and placed the animals in descending order as he saw them.’
Therefore it is not surprising that he gave to the pigs the top of the pecking order; as it firmly followed what he already knew – pigs are by far and away the cleverest animals on the farm.
Back in the day I used to sometimes help out on the farm belonging to the Hall family. You gain an impressive understanding of animals, particularly farm animals by what used to be called O.J.T. – on the job training.
I sat on a tractor one day when I noticed a sow pig sauntering across the back forty toward a field of excellent corn, almost ready to be harvested. Now I know this was not allowed and so did the pig. In fact Pa Hall had strategically placed some barbed wire around the corn field so that no animals would get in there and ruin the crop.
He forgot to tell the pigs.
And, what’s worse, he forgot that pigs are smart – very smart.
I kept thinking as I watched the sow head towards the corn, “She’ll never get past the barbed wire!”
There was a tree which formed part of the field boundary and it was misshapen. It rose about three feet upwards and then split to form two branches before it continued skyward. There was no barbed wire between the two branches at the three foot level, the space was up off the ground and not very large so no wire has been strung there. A very false economy as it happens!
I watched the old sow as she approached the gap and stood there looking at it. Knowing that pigs are smart, I expected that she would see that she could not gain access to the corn, turn around and head back.
What happened next amazed me.
She calmly walked back about 50 feet towards the farm yard, turned and charged the barbed wire. And I mean charged. Pigs can run surprisingly fast when they want to. I was convinced that I was witnessing the very first kamikaze pig. When she was about three feet from the tree that had no barbed wire in the very small gap, she launched herself right at it. She was, of course, too fat to squeeze through the gap, but she did manage to wedge herself between the two branches. I watched in amazement as she began to wriggle from left to right. With increasing vigour she wriggled away for at least 15 minutes and with each wriggle she advanced ever so slightly through the gap; until at last she managed, after one almighty wriggle, to plop gently on the other side and began to feast on the corn.
Clearly she had done this before. She was in no hurry.
I would have liked to stick around to see her get back to the farm, but I was honour bound to tell Pa Hall the story and let him make of it what he will. I duly reported the events and although I’m not entirely sure he believed me eventually he just shrugged his shoulders and muttered damn pig!
Before I leave he old sow perplexing the humans, I must mention a story I often told to school children – as long as they were over the age of 13.
Now, conventional wisdom has it that whilst pigs are quite clever; they are not intuitively so. I disagree.
One of the least pleasant jobs on the farm, aside from slaughtering the cows, was castrating the male piglets. They are often called shoats after they have been weaned.
First you have to round up all the young male pigs and corner them in the barn. At this stage they are usually quite calm and curious about their new surroundings. You manage to grab one of the little critters and whilst sitting on a stool you place the piglet between your knees with his bottom side up. By this stage the piglet is screaming blue murder, but it clearly doesn’t know why – nor do the others. Next you take your single-edged razor blade and swiftly and deftly remove the pig’s ball bag and spray some disinfectant on the wound. Now he let’s out an unheard of scream, unlike anything heard before.
Immediately, all the other piglets scream and start running around looking for a way out.
This special scream obviously means in Porcinesque “Help, they have just cut my balls off!” How else would the others know exactly what’s coming?
The moral: pigs are smart and can communicate with each other. Perhaps when we kill ourselves and despoil the planet through war or disease Orwell’s vision may come true – pigs rule!
