I used to be really good at stress management, or maybe it was just such a frequent state of being in my life I was just really adept at it. These days though it rather knocks me for six. Last year I had a buzzing in my ears for a few days, I forget what it coincided with but I was adding to to an already long list of stuff I was struggling with rather than realising it was the physical manifestation of that actual list. Some extensive googling and asking everyone else on island if they could hear the buzzing which felt so real and outside of my body I was utterly convinced there was a helicopter about to land that no one else could see or hear and it finally abated.
On Thursday, after a few sleepless nights the pigs arrived. It did NOT go smoothly – the sow, Blackie is ENORMOUS! Way, way bigger than I had expected. The boar, Bob was sitting down on his haunches and looking really hacked off. We walked them – Sandy the previous owner and Andrew, her friend with the 4×4 and trailer who brought them, down the track and he reckoned it was worth trying to drive it. Blackie lumbered out of the trailer and fairly quickly Ady was able to lead her up the croft and into her new pen. She is very overweight so will start to slim down a bit over the summer here but will still be a pricey mouth to feed, and we never really wanted her anyway, it was just that she came with Bob.
Bob took forever to come out of the trailer and then could not really stand. He laid down for a while, tried and failed to get up a few times and then just laid down. We had a cup of tea with Sandy and Andrew and their kids (they had brought one each!) before they needed to head away to catch the ferry (which they only just managed). Leaving poor old Bob. Sandy was upset, this was very much not how she had wanted it all to go either and I think she found it really hard to leave them.
We left Bob to it, hoping he just needed to get over the trauma of the journey, fed the others and had to go down to a community meeting. We decided Bob would either not last the night due to the shock and possible injury, or would perk up and be fine by morning. We checked him a few times but no real change.
The meeting was fairly straightforward with no big upsets but I think everyone had been anticipating something to kick off and by the time we got home I had bright starry flashing lights in my peripheral vision, a real spacey feeling and was just utterly exhausted. I made dinner and felt a little better but by 10pm (early for me) I was falling asleep so went to bed and fell straight asleep. I was worried I might be ill and felt as though I had spent hours crying – my eyes hurt and were hard to focus and I was just so very, very tired. Turns out it must have been stress because after a good nights sleep I did feel a lot better.
Friday morning Bob was trying to stand (not very successfully). Ali came up for a cup of tea and to meet the pigs. I spent ages baking for the evening – cheesy stars, pizzas, quiches etc as it was Cheese Night. We spent some time with Bob deciding the best course of action and then went down for the evening. Had a really good night, good turn out, some lovely food, some good chats and laughs and a late arrival home. Unusually Davies and Scarlett stayed with us and we all came home together although we were part of the last to leave posse. My excess of wine drinking hit me on the way home and I felt a bit rough but we sat on the sporran drinking cups of tea and star gazing and I perked up.
Saturday – I slept in and felt much better for it. A mix of out on the croft stuff, crocheting and making pizza for dinner. We watched Doctor Who and it was supposed to be an early night but somehow that didn’t quite happen. Ady had been at work in the morning and done laundry, Scarlett made a start on painting the sporran with green wood preserver which had arrived on the ferry.
Today – Scarlett’s done more wood preserver painting, I tidied and cleaned the bathroom and bedroom in preparation for Mum & Dad visiting next week, Ady did wood working stuff with Mike this morning, Davies has been catching up on some iplayer stuff, Ady cooked roast pork. It’s been quite cold but dry so not the glorious calling you outside weather of earlier in the week but not bad either.
We will have to make a decision about Bob in the next day or so – kill him or keep giving him 24 hour reprieves. Ady and I both have the same gut feeling that he is not going to make it, I think he has internal injuries which are just too severe and would probably prevent him from breeding again anyway. It’s such a shame as this felt like a real poetic solution to losing Tom and infact might just mean another dead pig to deal with and a huge great sow we never wanted anyway. We WWOOFed with so many hosts who had allowed their livestock holding numbers to get out of hand through poor management or sentimentality and we are determined not to go the same way and end up running some sort of animal sanctuary but it’s really hard playing god too. Decisions, decisions…