Desert Stuff

It is hot. Like, July hot. It isn't the hottest summer ever, but I'd say the temperature is probably over a hundred at seven p.m.

I'm in my kitchen, and I look out my back door. I see something. Big. Flesh colored. Wait, it can't be flesh colored. It was probably white. Oh! Sh*t! My neighbor's husky has probably escaped again. If I don't catch that dog, it'll die in this heat.

I bust outside. The dog has gone around the side of my house. I turn the corner.

That is no dog. That's a pig. A huge f'ing pig. It probably weighs a buck sixty.

I panic, not really prepared for a pig who outweighs me to be squaring off to me in the hundred plus degree evening.

I turn and run back to the door. I can hear the pig crashing after me. I make it inside. The pig oinks at the door.

I'm screaming to my husband.  

"THERE'S A PIG IN THE BACK YARD!"

He eventually comes into the kitchen.

"Why are you yelling?"

I point to the pig. He's immediately interested. It walks away from our door. My husband goes outside to look at it. I follow. He pets the pig, then the pig proceeds to walk through our irrigation connection, exploding it off of the spigot, then it turns the corner of the house, takes a bite out of our prickly pear, then lumbers outside of our fence, scratches itself against the mailbox post, nearly knocking it over, then walks up the hill, in the middle of the road.

I stare after it, just watching it saunter away.

Then a Honda Accord comes screaming up the road from the other direction. I look at the pig. It's waddling uphill, still in the middle of the road. I worry for the pig, but it's too hot for any quick movement, so for some unknown reason, I just point at the pig, which the oncoming car cannot see due to the curve of the road.

The car slows when it reaches me, and a woman with teletubby purple hair leans out the window.

"You seen a pig?"

I nod and keep pointing. She yells thanks, then the guy driving, clad in an oversized Celtics jersey, guns it up the hill.

They stop next to the pig, who has stopped upon seeing them. The woman explodes out of the car.

"Did you have a good adventure?" She asks.

The pig snorts and tries to walk away from her. She grabs the pig and tries to manhandle it back to the car. The tiny man in the giant jersey watches her with evident awe and fear.

The woman has the pig by the back legs, but the pig is putting up a good fight. The man opens the rear passenger door. The woman drags the pig backwards, like they are running a wheelbarrow race in reverse, to the open door. She puts the pig's legs down.

The pig is now facing the open door, but it doesn't want to go inside. The woman yells,

"Up! Up! Up!"

The pig just snorts in response. She slaps it on the hauches. The pig jumps in unassisted. She slams the door shut. The humans get in the car, and it whizzes away.

I'm still standing in my yard. When the car is gone, I walk into the backyard, where my husband is reassembling the irrigation.

"Good think that pig left. He could have eaten everything," he said, screwing the final piece in place. "Real desert stuff today."

Then he goes inside, completely nonplussed.

#Desertstuff