It was a Sunday, and the WWOOFers were out taking advantage of the good weather. We did the rounds, animal feeding etc, then headed off for the drive from North Donegal, through Leitrim to Roscommon.
It was going to be a 6 hour round trip, but we had sourced Organic piglets and since our old sow, Mrs Sweeney had refused all the boar’s advances, this seemed the best option. The mid-summer sun shone, the roads were clear, and on the way back home the two 8-week-old ginger piglets, unhappy about being loaded into the large straw strewn dog cage in the back of the Landrover, were soothed by Lyric FM on the radio.
It was 6pm when we got back. Rob, our older American WWOOFer (a real gentleman), helped to carry the cage and its now shrieking inhabitants into the prepared pen in the shed. We gave them fresh water and for safety assembled hurdles round the cage before securing the gate. I must add here that along with her aversion to the boar, Mrs Sweeney detested piglets, so safety was of the highest order.
While I prepared dinner, listening to Rob’s fascinating life stories as an artist, Geoff went with some boiled potatoes for the “new boys”. He returned, flustered. Something was very wrong. The piglets were gone!
The shed door was open for fresh air, but the pen’s gate was still closed, the hurdle in place and the cage door still fastened shut. We searched Mrs Sweeney’s pen, no sign of them, for ages we scoured the yard, the run up to the paddock, nothing.
We tried to eat dinner. Sometime after 8pm the phone rang. Our neighbour, 1km down the track wondered if the two ginger piglets playing on their lawn might belong to us. We dropped everything and drove down, but they were gone. We searched the fields, the pathways, under hedges and trees, the ditches in case they’d fallen in, listening carefully for any sound which might indicate the presence of an animal. No sign whatsoever.
We made our way home disconsolately. What a waste, of time, money, probably the waste of their little lives, misery prevailed.
It was still light after 10pm, so Rob went for a walk up the hill, through the fields behind the house. We kept going over how on earth they could have got out, the cage floor was secure, everything else was closed and in place. We live 2km from the road and any movement outside would have set the dogs barking, so there was no way anyone could have driven up and stolen them.
Then Geoff’s phone pinged with a new message. Rob, back from his walk on the way up to his accommodation, walked past the pig shed and there squealing to be let in were our two runaways. We settled them down for the night. How they knew the way home, where they had been we don’t know, we never worked it out, but they never ran away again.
Rob’s middle name is Gerard, so we called the two Bob and Gerry. We remember your stay with great fondness Rob.
