Pigs - Thursday Update

Rain off and on all day hindered my work today. Not that I didn't work in the rain. I did! But when the plants are wet, they are slippery (and so is the ground) and more difficult to pull out. Thus I work slower. I now have three sides of the pasture completely clear, and the fourth partially cleared. 

Shelly is still in the pasture, but I haven't seen nor heard from Lava. Shelly showed up within two minutes of my arrival, so the buggers are aware of my presence. I could hear him running through the ferns, grunting as he got closer. He actually seemed happy to see me. I found out later that his joy of seeing he was strictly for the pleasure of driving me nuts. He still had a little food leftover from last night, so he wasn't all that interested in breakfast. 

Getting right to work pulling ferns, I had brought along a pair of work gloves, pruning shears, garden knife, and loppers. Setting them aside, I started making my way down the fence. You guessed it.......Shelly sneaked over and stole the work gloves. He let out a drawn out shill squeal which got my attention. Once I made eye contact with him, he made a couple of hops and butt-twists then took off, gloves in mouth. Bugger! Blasted bugger! I never saw those gloves again. They're somewhere lost out in those ferns, never to be found again I'm sure. 

Ok. I picked up all the tools and put them on the other side of the fence. No more pig stealing shenanigans today. 

I had also brought along a roll of electric fence rope, the lightweight stuff. It's easy to work with and effective as a hotwire. Since I no longer had gloves, I figured I'd set up the electric fence on the fenceline that I had cleared. That way I'd get something accomplished before I had to trudge back to the house for more gloves. The roll I was working with was only a partial roll, so I wasn't sure how much ground I would be able to over with it. I had a number of fiberglass poles and about 50 plastic poles. So I set to work getting a dozen poles in, then ran the electric fence wire, then installed more poles, then more wire. I gradually worked my way down the short side of the pasture, then started down the long side. I wasn't down the long side more than 10 feet before Shelly showed up again. He kept ambushing my legs, biting at my shoes. Dang pig! I finally had enough by now. I was wet from the rain and getting chilly. I was in no mood to play games, so I yelled and waved my arms, chasing Shelly. 

Shelly got his revenge. He found something else to do that didn't involve me directly. He began messing with the electric fence wire. By the time I noticed it, Shelly had chewed the wire in about 2 dozen places. I guess he was just curious and looking for fun, but he sure was destructive. He ruined about 150' of wire. Sheesh! By now I was fed up with the morning. I was thoroughly soaked from the rain, getting cold, and was losing badly to a pig. 

Having errands to do around lunchtime, I didn't get back to the pig problem until mid afternoon. Shelly came a'runnin' when he heard me arrive. I only got about 2 hours work pulling ferns before the rain drove me to call it quits. Shelly kept me company the whole time, occasionally ambushing me but generally just watching from a distance. I'm pretty disappointed in my progress today.  But Shelly seemed pleased.