Elbow deep in pig guts

This city girl had the most amazing experience this past weekend! As you know, I spend many weekends at the little cabin in the woods (in the middle of Nowheresville) with Manchild. I'm sorry to admit it but sometimes, I wear camo and clodhoppers and I don't paint my face up nice and pretty. I DO maintain my manicure but the rest of me is slowly turning a little bit red neck. Gasp, argh, oh, the horror! Because I'm a city girl through and through.

On this particular weekend a relative came to visit Nowheresville to go hog hunting. I'm all for hog hunting because the bastards can tear up a yard or pasture in no time flat. They're a menace. Now, I'm not hatin' enough to actually shoot a pig but I'll cheer if I hear about one getting pegged. And the visiting relative shot two of them!

I bundled up kidlet and took her to see what a hog looked like up close and personal. She was timid at first but I bent over and started petting the smaller of the two so she'd see that there was nothing to fear and to prove that it was stone cold dead. She gave it a tentative touch then raced to the safety of the car so she could listen to music on her ever present i-pod. I on the other hand, was fascinated by the whole thing.

In the beginning, I was feeling sort of sorry to see a life that was extinguished and to feel that it was still warm to the touch, but I kept reminding myself that that extinguished life was probably one of the ones who had rooted up our beautifully manicured front yard and then I was no longer sad, I wanted to cut that thing up so we could have a monster barbecue!

I was expecting to see lots of blood and gore but under the skilled hands of the hunter, the flesh peeled away, there was hardly any blood and I got to see the inner workings of the pig. Once the skin was gone it was time to remove the innards. Again, I figured there would be sprays of blood and yuck but the guts all had silvery sacs they were contained in and once the cut was long enough, they almost gracefully spilled out.

I had a bit of a shock when I saw 5 pouches that I couldn't identify. I was informed that those were the sacs that piglets were percolating in. Awwwwwww, the pig had babies in her!!!!! Again, reason set in and I deduced that those were 5 less pigs that would ruin my lawn. All of the guts and undesirable parts went into the gut bucket and all that was left was glorious pounds and pounds of future barbecue.

It was odd to me to see the carcass steaming in the cold air and the cooler full of steaming meat. I prefer my meat on a clean Styrofoam plate with plastic wrap making it all nice and neat. But then again, I wouldn't have given up the opportunity to watch a big, smelly, ugly, destructive pig turn into succulent cuts of meat.

The whole ordeal excited me so much, it took me a while to come down from it all. I felt like Betsy the Big Game Butcher! (Even if I didn't shoot anything.) I'd like to thank Jay for letting me get all up in his hog while he was trying to work. I think he knew how excited I was to get to witness such a thing and help. And I bet he didn't mind too much because I kept feeding him sips of cold beer and making sure the light was shining on what he was doing.

Even though I don't want to shoot the critters, I'm sooooo ready for another hog hunt. I bet sharing this tale will help me get into the Jr. League for sure!