Look at your skeleton. Lucky we are to have one. Have you ever looked at your fingers, felt around them, pushing the skin about, worrying at the bones laying there under your skin. Like a bone person living within you? Harder yet gentler. Have you ever run one finger down the other finger feeling the bone in there. There is a bone in there you know.
We prefer to live without looking too deeply. Like looking at a black and white image that is quite appealing.
Compared to this red image, the real one, that is a bloody visceral mess, all the piglets passed out asleep under their heat lamp. Their red heat lamp. Red is not a restful colour. But this is what they really look like.
Happy wee piglets. About this time in their development (four/five days old) the piglets begin to seek warmth away from their mother. Until now they would sleep very close to their mothers. But now they are in the creep most of the time, where they can lay out flat and safe. Relaxed. No worries about sudden sow movements from their mothers razor feet.
The cold must be coming because all the animals are building big warm beds.
And look at how fast these piggies are putting on weight in their black and white rendition.
The heat lamp is above a metal trash bin for two reasons. 1. The metal conducts and retains heat so when it is really cold the piglets have a great big hot water bottle to climb inside and 2. if the light bulb falls it will smash apart on the metal, lessening the risk of a barn fire.
By 9pm last night, when I did my last rounds, the piglets were all INside the metal rubbish bin, the hot light warming the metal and keeping them all toasty warm while Poppy slept right at the entrance to the creep only a breath away her own skeleton covered in a solid layer of pork fat quite prepared for the winters cold with no need for a heat lamp.
I hope you have lovely day.
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
34 responses to “Your skeleton”
Not my bones but the newest additon to our household’s bones…Diesel, a Koolie, is touchy feely, loves pats and leaning, so I’m reacquainting with the feel & joy of it 🐶
Ooooh! I didn’t know what a Koolie was so I Googled it. Congratulations! Pretty dog!
A new breed for us too. We have had dogs similar to Miss C’s Boo Boo however wanted to retain their memory rather than repeating. But we wanted to home a rescue working dog, because they are so active they aren’t easy to place, and he at a year old has come our way via the RSPCA.
I Googled also – such beautiful and varied colouring! But a dog that needs a job, so that will perhaps keep you busy as well.
And I know what you mean by the joy of it. There is nothing quite like a dog who loves you, they show you in so many ways that can make your heart melt.
I wish you many good years together.
Chris S in Canada
Thank you ♡ He is a plain shiny black, brown eyed Koolie but handsome we think. As well as working, they can be a good companion dog if they have enough stimulation. I’m enjoying learning his style, and also remembering simple tge tactile joy of his company.
Nope 🙂 !! Put ‘the skeleton’, mine that is, on the backburner quite some time ago. A little too well covered at the moment in parts anyways but with rather painful genetic changes to it about which I valiantly try to forget. If you do not think about it, it kind’of ‘goes away 🙂 !!! Awfully loving ‘sibling’ photos . . .
a dog is made of bones and meat; his body’s kind of long and round, and at its corners there are legs, to keep this body off the ground; a head and tail at either end; we will find if we search with care, and all these different parts of dog are neatly wrapped in skin and hair; reputedly from My Uncle Bill Johnson; an .EB white type of guy who enchanted me as a child and probably caused me to become a writer; Nobel prize for him in my child’s mind
Beautifully described. Those words are exactly what I’m loving rediscovering 🌟
i think my uncle wrote it; can’t remember rest; glad you are rediscovering..
Bones give us substance. Your piglets have beautiful bones and are already putting beautiful meat on those bones. Fire is a very real concern. My husband’s family lost 500 sows and piglets in a barn fire. Horrendous. Safe winter to all.
Little sleeping babies! They are rounding out their parts quite nicely now! Poppy is such a good mom.
Piglets, especially piles of sleeping piglets, are irresistibly cute. I’ve learned two things from this post. First, I’ve never thought of the trash can under the heat lamp thing. We’ll try that the next time we have to use a heat lamp. Second, it has never occurred to me to use black and white when taking photos of babies under the heat lamp, to get rid of the weird red glow. Gonna do that too now. 🙂
wow what a fabulous light arrangement-you are so smart!
I love how happy those piggies look sprawled and overlapping.
Gorgeous post Celi .. Those happy wee piglets!