Stori - what a long day

There are some mornings when you wake up you realize, this is gonna be a pretty easy day. Today was not one of those days. It all started with a pig named Eugene.

Our third sow had her litter of 9 yesterday. Everything seemed pretty uneventful. As of yesterday afternoon when Dad and I checked her, all babies were good, all mommas were fine. Today being Saturday means Marc is home to stay in with the youngest two kids so I can go do the horses' morning feed. Usually when Marc is at work, my Dad throws them their hay in the morning on his way to do the milking. I love Saturdays. No real alarm clocks besides my kids hollering for us to wake up. Marc is home, which I love. We get to sit together in piece, drinking coffee until 9 am when I have to go do the chores. Feeding time is one of the highlights of my day.

So off I go this morning to visit my horses. I stop inside my folks' house to let Paige know we are going to go into town to get her that haircut she has been asking for. Paige sleeps over at my parents house every Friday night. Not because she has to, but because it's all their special time together. I poke my head into the barn to say good morning to my Dad. He informs me that we had a little pig that was stepped on, looked hurt, pretty weak, could hardly walk. Time to take him into the house and patch him up. We got a 24 hour old pig for breakfast, but not in bacon fashion. Meet Eugene. My kids name him Eugene after Mr. Krabs on Spongebob since he is the crabbiest pig I have ever met! He squeals, and barks, and grunts, and growls. Never settles down to snuggle, fights us the entire time. After a physical check I find a tiny little tear in his skin in front of his left leg along his belly. It didn't bleed, was barely puffy. I sprayed some pain relieving antibacterial on it. I was starting to lose the excitement over a house pig. I feed him a bottle, put him down for a nap and Gram and Paige and I head to town for her haircut. Since town is over 30 miles away, it takes us several hours before we get back. I feed Eugene several more times during which he yells at me, fights me, and bites my thumb with this tiny tusks. What a difficult little brat!

After I feed him his 5 pm bottle, I'm getting ready to put him back in his sickbed when I unwrap his towel (he has a horrible case of the scours and I didn't need any pig poop on me) and find his intestines poking out of his little wound. He had fought me so hard and was so mad, he had pushed his little guts right out of his sore in his side. When Dad gets to my house for supper, we proceed with surgery. For the record, guts come out a lot easier than they go back into little holes. Luckily, both of my parents had EMT training at one point and both were pretty good with stitches. It's amazing how quickly my laundry room counter can turn into an operating room. Out come the sutures, the betodine solution, cotton balls, alcohol, q-tips, towels, and paper towels. My husband holds the light, my Mom holds the baby's head, I'm the officiating "Gofer" nurse, and my Dad is the surgeon. Even after over an hour of surgery, that pig, barely a day old, never passes out and never stops fighting. My Dad would get all his little guts stuffed back in, the pig would scream and push them right back out again. We had to increase the size of the hole in order to not pinch the bowels when shoveling them back in to the body cavity. At one point, Mom goes out to referee supper time for the kids, they were eating moose stew at this point, while Marc, Dad and I kept at the pig. After a lot cussing and cajoling and cramming, we got Eugene the Grouch sewed back up. All his parts close to the places they originated from and him none the friendlier. So far so good. As of 10:30 tonight Eugene is still well enough to keep on complaining. We will have to see what the morning will bring us. Will it be a miracle or a finally quiet pig?