Visiting Chris can be quite an experience. The last time I travelled the two hours to his place I spent most of the visit looking at the fast-disappearing back end of a pig that had a jink that would put Beegee* to shame.


Unless you drive a Sherman tank, you have to go slowly along Chris' five-kilometre, deeply rutted 'driveway', which is just what I was doing when suddenly confronted with his truck hurtling madly towards me. It halted, Chris leapt out, his dog, Dylan (aka 'Dill' - apt, too) fell off the back and both of them raced past me up the track the way I had come, Chris yelling what was either “Tigger keek yuppo nix!” or, “Didja see a coupla pigs!??” as he disappeared round the bend.

I leaned out of the window in a nonplussed sort of way until he reappeared, waving frantically for me to reverse into the ditch, which I promptly did (hey - we townies are not all slow on the uptake! Uncomprehending, yes; blindly and illogically obedient, sure, but not slow!).

This allowed him to leap back into the truck and roar past, narrowly avoiding wrapping Dylan round the left front wheel. I scampered after the truck, clutching the tailgate and trying to perch on the towbar - not an easy task, as the truck was about 85% mud. Coming across two busily snuffling pigs happily destroying a small stand of native bush and excavating as efficiently as a pair of turbo-charged ploughs was not at all disturbing. What was a little daunting was their size - one was roughly the size of a small hippo while the other looked a lot better fed (it was a pregnant sow, I later learned) - and their attitude. Becoming feral and acquiring reputations for being murderously bad-tempered were apparently their two most burning ambitions.

The truck shot past the two porcine bulldozers. Chris executed - with an appropriate barrage of expletives and gear-grinding - a 12-point turn to get the truck facing back towards the pigs, then braked, left it idling, and leapt out of the cab in order to creep towards the pigs with all the sylph-like gliding and delicate tip-toeing that his outsized gumboots and the squelching mud would allow. The pigs displayed a masterful ability to ignore these goings-on, until Chris reached a spot about 10 feet from the nearest monster, whereupon they exploded into blubbery flight in about five different directions. Chris launched himself at the rear legs of the nearest porker, succeeding only in collecting a faceful of mud and colliding in a tangle with Dylan, who chose this moment to reappear in a frenzied yapping commotion.

* Beegee Williams - Great All Black Winger - close relation to God

As man and dog extricated themselves, exchanging, I noticed, several bites in the process, I found myself staring down the barrel - the multiple barrel, really: nostrils, ears, eyes - of a charging pink juggernaut. Adrenalin and some primeval hunter/gatherer instinct ignited, and I hooted like a banshee, waved my arms and leapt up and down as one on hot coals.

Certain Death veered off the road into the scrub and vanished, noisily. Dylan plunged after it, while Chris started yelling “Get 'im Dill!” - I marvelled at how well-trained Chris was - before I too, caught up in the excitement of the chase, hurled myself into the underbrush on the heels of dog and pig. Dylan and I spent several fruitful minutes chasing each other through a swamp and getting to know ourselves as individuals until we realised that the pig had doubled back onto the road. Not at all sheepishly, we both emerged in a triumphantly bedraggled state to find Chris slowly flapping his arms and singing absently as he followed the now-deceptively-placid pair along.

It seemed that our objective was to shepherd both pigs onto the road, then calmly but firmly, using crisp, curt commands like “Hut!” and “Yah!” and “Keepgoingyou-expletivedeletedsods!”, walk them back to the pen only 4000 metres distant.

This plan worked like clockwork for about 30 seconds, when the smaller of our two charges decided to do just that - charge - at a five-strand fence beside the road. For an instant it looked as if the pig had trapped itself between the wires, but with a heave and a TWANNGG it shot through into the neighbour's paddock.

By now my hunter/gatherer reflex had regressed even further, and the terrier in me (caught up in the chase, etc) had me clambering through scrub, in and out of ditch, and over fence in pursuit of the errant swine. Dylan, ever one for mayhem, bounded after me, over me and around me. A roar from Chris of “GET 'IM DILL!” gave the dog a sudden sense of importance, and he shot like a slobbering panting arrow towards our prey. (Did I say 'prey'? Ha!) The pig vanished from sight into a clump of gorse bushes, so I cleverly skirted round to catch it coming out the other side. (Did I say 'cleverly'? HA!)

Just for a second, picture the scene from the pig's point of view. Hemmed in by gorse bushes, a manic slavering hound baying in the rear, confronted with a crazed, mud-spattered, sweating, heaving human ……

It was no contest.

The gorse bushes never stood a chance. And, as the pig smashed its way into the open again ….. ALONG CAME DILL! He fastened onto one of those large floppy pink ears, and no amount of frantic squealing would make him let go. Even the pig started squealing - but that didn't work either. Chris had joined us by now, having abandoned the pregnant sow to her fate, and seeing blood pouring from the pig's ear, and envisioning several hundred dollars worth of pig fast becoming dog tucker, bellowed “LEAVE 'IM ALONE DILL!” Dylan took a reflective second or two to look surprised at hearing His Master's Voice, which was ample time for the pig to rush over a hill and hide in a herd of cows.

Chris opened his mouth and lungs to bellow again.
Now, if he had stopped at this point and imagined for a second the disaster he was about to unleash, he may well have clammed up immediately. As it was, “GET 'IM DILL!” rang out like a clarion call across the hills, Dill plunged into the mob of cattle, then proceeded to chase every four-footed beast in the paddock to the various ends of the earth. Dylan was not one for treating animals with discrimination - cow? pig? - to him it made no difference - at least he was chasing something. These cows were not very old and not very bright, and having a large pig rush into their midst had made them skittery to start with. When Dylan entered the fray, or rather, caused the fray - the cows became downright terror-stricken, and careered madly up hill and down ditch, into fences and bushes, plunging into marshy ground, churning up the paddock with their hooves, all the time bellowing in consternation. Dill was having the time of his life.

Chris wasn't.

Chris relied on a fairly low-tech early-warning-cum-monitoring system regarding his pigs. When his neighbour to the south (whose land we were presently helping to destroy) came charging round complaining about marauding animals on his land, Chris knew where his pigs were, which was probably something of a relief to him, if he hadn't seen them for a week or two. Of course, such a neighbourly complaint required an active response, which entailed Chris and Dill going and retrieving the pigs (which process I was presently witnessing) and restoring them to the bosom of Chris' pig-pen. Of course, in my city-dweller's naivety, I thought that this panicking of the neighbour's cattle and wading in and out of gorse-infested swamp was all in a day's work for my intrepid friend and his dog, and that they would be going about such humdrum routine with an air of automatic detachment, perhaps whistling a cheery tune …..

So I was a little taken aback when Chris clumped past me in a black humour, muttering murderous remarks about pork chops and crackling.

His ire changed in focus from pig to dog when Dill, finally choosing the pinkest from among the bellowing, careering mob around him, set off to chase the pig. This, of course, was the worst thing he could have done. Instead of craftily getting around behind the rogue pig and shepherding him back towards us, Dill ran straight at the beast, and the two of them disappeared over the horizon in a flash. Chris' lungs were given a workout, until he decided that we wouldn't see much of either Dill or the pig again for the rest of the day,

“Stupid unprintable dog,” he grumbled, as we both headed back to the road, the truck, and less likely, the pregnant sow.
Two out of three ain't bad, I suppose. The road was where we had left it. The truck stood forlornly upon it. The sow - naturally - had vanished.

“Unprintable pig,” dispiritedly, as Chris climbed behind the wheel. “Here, have a beer.” He fished out a dusty old can, whose age was exceeded only by its warmth, from under the seat, and we passed the can back and forth, sharing the half of the contents not jolted out by the motion of the truck as we bounced our defeated way back up to Chris' place.
After a progressively more convivial hour in his shack, it was time for me to hit the road again, so we made for the truck, and were about to embark on the trip back to my embogged vehicle, when who should come trotting up to the homestead with all the nonchalance of one out for a Sunday stroll, but the pregnant sow!

Chris was galvanised into action.
Actually, that's a bit of an overstatement. He did slam the truck door, but then, apparently ignoring the pig, he clumped down the bank to the sty, opened its gate, clumped back up to where the sow was watching him sagely, and stood, hands on hips, tapping one foot. “Well? GET IN!”

He sow walked past him with an aristocratic air, straight into the sty. After more clumping and door-slamming we were off, eyes keenly skinned in case our other adversary was about to make an appearance also.

It was not to be. We reached my car, heaved it out of the ditch, turned it around, and continued along the driveway towards the main road, I because I was going home, and Chris because he was going to the local store.

The final gate to the main road was high up on a rise which gave a great view of the neighbour's paddocks. As we paused there we turned to see off in the distance, rootling as destructively as ever, happy in its busy-ness and completely at peace with the world, that pig!

* * * * *

I have great satisfaction in adding, by way of a footnote to the story, the fact that several weeks later Chris appeared on my doorstep bearing a newspaper-wrapped parcel containing a quantity of home-cured bacon, the subsequent consumption of which was carried out with a great deal of triumph!

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