Sad news about Number Nine

Very quietly yesterday, Number Nine died,  laid between his mother’s front legs, right under her raised chin. His nose directly below hers. He was there with his siblings and his mother not moving from him.  He had not been rejected to die alone in a corner like many animals, he died right there with his family. Right in the scent of his mothers breath.  He must have crawled over there or they gathered around him I don’t know. Or maybe he was sleeping there and died. But they stayed with him. I have never seen anything like it.

She would not let me take the body away of course.It was a female.  Nor would she move from the baby herself. Every time I came too close to the gate she would bark a warning and rise slightly but not disturbing the body. So I left her to herself for a while. She was quiet and I had to make a plan. After a good three hours of this stand off I opened the big sliding door to the outside and threw the hose in there, I swirled the water around in and out of buckets making lots of cool water noise and I called to her like I do every day. Shush, Shush. Come on Charlotte, you big fatty,  Shush, Shush. It is time honey.

Soon she came out to the door just in time to see me jump the fence but she was quiet now. I raced around the side, through the barn, silently jumped the panel into her pen and shut the big door from the inside to keep Char out but she had buried her face in the buckets of water and did not even notice.  Within seconds I had taken little Number Nine out of the pen, leaving her other babies still asleep.  Being very careful not to create a commotion.  Laying Number Nine in a box,   I went back outside and with the gate between us I gave Charlotte a good back scratch. She did not roar at me, or refuse my hand, she just let me scratch and talk. After a while I opened the big doors again and she lumbered back inside.  I shut the door to keep the little ones in  and went to bury Number Nine.  

Later Charlotte ate at last, and brought the little ones out from the back room to play in her  water bowl, not minding that I was right there on the other side of the pig panel. I went  and picked some weeds with lots of dirt in their roots and she ate those too. She had some strawberries from the garden and milk with eggs. She let me scratch her ears, her head down and her back up for more scratching. Leaving me, she inspected each of her little ones but did not look for Number Nine in the corner, somehow in some wild animal kind of way she knew that he was gone now and she moved on. Her mood had undergone a gentle pacific change. She was calm again.

Soon she gathered her brood and took them back into their sleeping area. She gently nudged and cooed them into the corner and going to the opposite wall she pushed the straw around,  almost lying down three times and just as she approached the point of no return  a piglet would move, so she would rise back up, send them back into their corner again, wait till they were still then go back and begin to lay her body down all over again.

After circling round and round like a dog she sunk  right down and then rolled onto her side. There is a very specific soft low bark she uses to call the piglets in to drink. It is a very contented and safe sound. A very old  sound.  A night time sound. The moment the piglets heard it they tumbled out of their pile and raced over and began to feed. She lay down her head and closed her eyes and did not watch me leave.

And so we worked into the evening cutting the hay.

Animals are not human. They are different from us and from each other. I think it is a mistake to attribute human qualities to animals. In fact I would go so far as to say it is a bit arrogant. As though our own human emotions and responses are the only ones worth emulating.  I would not call pigs intelligent, this word has too many levels.  They roll in muck, throw themselves into piles of cow poo. They will fight each other including their children for food. They will tip over and foul their water leaving themselves thirsty. They are not cognitive or careful. They don’t think about tomorrow or plan their actions. I call them intuitive.  They will learn  rhythms  and anticipate my actions. They will watch a gate and work at its opening. They learn pathways and simple commands. They have a repertoire of sounds for different occasions and use different levels and tones of sound for different people. In their own cloud of wordless knowledge they do know the difference between alive and dead.

And I saw this mother pig lie in place with her head raised above this dead piglet for hours. She was on her belly. The others had fallen asleep waiting for a feed. It appeared that she was waiting too. Waiting for time to pass.  Allowing quiet to come again.  Not like a person but like a pig.

Good morning. I wonder if we need to be more pig-like. When death comes to our houses maybe we should just sit a while and wait with it. Allow the death to be. Give it its due. Embrace the weight of it without trying to heal or get over it. Just sit still with our hands quiet in our laps, our heads tipped to the side listening to nothing. Just breathe beside the lack of breath before we go back into the flurry of life and burials and funereal feasts and making sense of it all.

All is well now. That’s enough I think. It is a clear stunning day. Time to start work. Every morning we get to start over, lucky really.

your friend, celi