[Granville-Hough] 29 June 2009 - Big Sow
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough at oakapple.net
Wed Oct 13 06:09:55 PDT 2010
BIG SOW AND HER PIGLETS
Recently I have been watching televisions shows about the feral hog
invasions of the Southern woodlands, and other places as well. Hogs, it
seems, will go feral very quickly and act as if they never knew humans.
Actually, when I grew up, my parents had lived most of their lives on
the open range, and all their livestock was semi-feral, especially hogs.
They had, at great expense, built a hog proof fence surrounding a
quarter section of land (160 acres.) With our strong fence, we could
keep our own livestock at home and other livestock out. They became
tamer and more accustomed to being fed and watered and they actually
knew their own humans and would come on call. Our hog call was not very
original but the hogs knew it well enough. It was something like:
Quoooo-Opp, Piggy-Piggy, with our hands cupped around our mouth to
carry the sound. We would call four or five times and we would see our
pigs coming out of the fields and woods toward our feeding trough and
salt log.
In the 1920s and early 1930s we had not learned about winter cover
crops, so we used our livestock as natural gleaners of the harvest. For
our hogs and other livestock, we included hog goobers (a form of peanut
which left its seed in the ground, chufas (a ground nut with a parent
plant looking like swamp grass), fall peas, and wild foods. If we missed
an ear of corn, they found it. In cotton fields, they found wild
maypops, succulent grasses, and in old meadows, they could dig out
crawfish. Of course, the original piney woods rooter fattened on pine
mast, the big seeds of the longleaf pine which could blow very far from
the parent tree. Some hogs got very good at cracking wild pecans and
hickory nuts.
When we began making molasses, our hogs had just about finished their
gleaning duties, and they loved the smell of sweet molasses being made.
Every evening we gave them water at our cane mill and we let them have
the days skimmings, generally a tub full of all the debris which was in
the cane juice, bits of stalk, twigs, dirt, and random debris which we
skimmed out with a skimmer from the top of the boiling juice.
It must have been in the fall of 1935, when we had a very fine and
gentle hog we called Big Sow. Someone came by and saw her at the cane
mill and offered my father $25.00 for her. That would be like a thousand
dollars today. She weighed about 200 pounds and was ready to give birth
to piglets. We small Hough boys, 11 to 6 years of age, would rub her
sides with a stick and she would lie down contentedly and grunt to the
piglets waiting to be born. One evening we could see that she had given
birth, but it was too late to go into the woods to rescue the piglets.
The next day we went to school as usual, and my father was cooking the
cane juice, my brother Dueward was grinding cane, and Uncle Coley
Richardson and a hired man Roy Austin were taking care of the chores of
moving the piles of cane, clearing away the mashes, of bagasse, and
keeping the fire going. My father asked Coley and Roy if they would go
find where Big Sow had placed her piglets. He had prepared a protected
place in our hog pen where she could nestle her brood in safety All
sorts of animals in the woods would attack small piglets. So Coley and
Roy thought this would be a fine diversion. So they took a washtub in
which to rescue the piglets. They had been working with pitchforks
clearing away the cane mashes, so Coley suggested to Roy they might need
a pitchfork to gather some of the nest straw for the bottom of the washtub.
They soon found Big Sow and the piglets and matter of factly went about
putting the piglets in the washtub. Big Sow did not quite see it the
same way. Here were two strange humans putting her babies in a washtub
and moving them without her permission. She made a terrible ruckus and
charged. She weighed about 200 pounds and had mean looking teeth. Uncle
Coley Richardson went up the nearest tree, but Roy Austin was not so
lucky. Roy was cross-eyed, and did not see clearly. He thought he could
fend Big Sow off with the pitchfork long enough to get up the next tree.
As Big Sow came around the tree in a huge lunge, she caught the
pitchfork on her head and it pierced through into her brain. She fell to
the ground and died in a quivering mass. So it was two sad and
bewildered men who went back to the cane mill and reported to an
infuriated Elisha Hough, who gave them the tongue lashing of their
lifetimes.
More than 65 years later, my brother Clifford Hough died and my younger
brother Donald Hough and I attended his funeral. As we passed through
Mize, Donald stopped to get gasoline. He said a very old cross-eyed man
asked him who he was and when he said Donald Hough, son of Elisha Hough,
out came this old mans passionate story of how he, Roy Austin,
accidentally killed Big Sow. He had never again felt so badly, and he
had never again had such a tongue lashing. Donald could only say he had
never heard the story and was sorry it had happened. When Donald related
the story to me, I could remember it all too well. I ask Gods
forgiveness for my fathers violent temper and words, for I never heard
he ever touched another person in anger. If Roy Austin lived more
carefully and thoughtfully among his neighbors as a result of this sad
accident, I am thankful for that.
(P. S., at the time, I thought I could have gone into the woods, alone,
found Big Sow and her family, and talked her into following me to the
hogpen. Now, I have some greater knowledge of a mothers instincts, and
I am thankful I did not have the opportunity. Feral hogs do not take
kindly to human intervention. I think a safe admonition is: Dont try
to teach a hog to sing: you get no music, and you get a very annoyed
animal.)
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