Yesterday i was excited to spend the day away from the sanctuary hopefully doing what i do best, which is talking about pigs. We had some great stuff donated as i said in an earlier post and more crafts arrived with Corrie and Martin . Mom, my sister Nancy and bunny loving Carolyn yakked the day away. And then Anne from the Blueberry Publications joined us with bringing donations in.
The storm started to come in late afternoon and thankfully we were under a real commercial tent which me thinks is exactly what was donated this week. We shared the tent with the Maple Ridge SPCA and Mark was good company. The rain had us moving stuff under cover and then the two Wendy's came in to take over the night shift there. I got home and it started to rain and then that turned into a really good storm complete with thunder and lightening. In fact a couple of people camping up the hill had shock of there life when lightening hit tree, came out from the bottom and threw there cars and sent a few of them flying. Thankfully they are recovering okay. I sat under the carport for over an hour waiting for the rain to let up so i could feed the pig children's.
It is really hot out today and i just got home and the coolness of the house is welcoming. I'm going to jump in the shower in a few minutes here. We didn't really do that well , made about 200.00 . And yet the guy next to us was selling those cheap cowboy hats by the dozens for 25.00 a pop. Yesterday was fun but today dragged on but a few interesting things happened today.
My worse memory is a young lady standing in front of me. She started to tell us she had four pet pigs too. And for a second i was in disbelief because i don't know anyone around here who has pet Yorkshire's. And then i asked her if they were breeding sows and she answered yes. These kids don't even know what a 'pet ' means. So we now breed our pets and send the babies for slaughter ? Apparently 4h kids and there families do. She was wearing her 4H swine club shirt and stated with such a disregard for life "an animal is just an animal" , it made me cringe. It was like facing pure evil or the enemy and i didn't really know how to deal with that remark. It was like she was too far gone to be saved.
And i don't know if the girls sent over the boys later but three teenagers stood before me after we had torn everything down and were getting ready to go. Clearly we were both on different sides of the fence but the more vocal of the boys who kept assuring me he liked the taste of bacon and that the pig was worth 600.00 looked into my eyes when i spoke. I told him I didn't believe in profiting from flesh whether it is the sale of a child , a person or an animal . And i asked him to look into the eyes of his pigs to look into there soul. I told them all if they looked into there eyes they would see us, our eyes. He smiled at me after i told him he was a clever one, and promised to do just that.
What was even more weird is one of the boys returned with his sister and he clearly had something on his mind but something prevented him from saying what ever it was . I took this opportunity to ask him if his pig loved him, if his pig had ever said hello to him. I demonstrated how a pig communicates that and as they walked away i told him, they just want to live like you and me. And although he was trying to keep up to his sister they came past me again and he sort of secretly said the words "i am going to see if my pig loves me"
What shouldn't strike me odd is the fact that these kids know nothing about the speices they are spending all there time with. How could they not hear the 'hello ' we all know from there pigs?? And now that i think of it, i should of asked them if any of them saw there pigs wag there tails. Maybe i should start my own club and call it the 4abc's.
This is something i am not very good at , faced with directed opposition to everything i believe in is uncomfortable for me and i wish i knew the right things to say. A gal yesterday told us they keep three pigs and when they send them away she cries. I told her to make a stand for her pigs and let them live there lives out and she listened.
I didn't go into the barns at the fair today because i don't need to torture myself with facing pigs i cannot save. I can only hope i planted seeds today.
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