The Pig Whisperer

It’s the Friday before New Year’s Eve.  It was just another day at the salon - unless your salon happens to be part of a compound that includes your home and one other unlikely partner: a farm. I’ve  had a good day in the salon. 

I was precisely placing caramel highlights to offset the graceful graying of the corkscrewed curly-Q’s streaming down my client's back. My son was on winter break, quietly noodling on the IPhone he inherited from the fortuitous timing of Christmas and an upgrade. I’m grateful to Santa for earphones and the bi-fold doors that separate our worlds. Avery was raised on the other side of the Great Divide between my work and a home that gracious folks would call ‘lived in’.  At 14 he hasn’t outgrown interupting me for lame reasons, typically met with “The Look”. I was almost done for the day when the bi-fold doors creaked opened. As I prepared to muster said ‘look’ I was met with another that said ‘something’s wrong’. Pointing towards something just outside the picture window, I saw three not-so-little pigs. I huffed and puffed and issued stealth orders to call his Dad and track their whereabouts until I was done. 

Collecting myself, I went back to corkscrewed curly-Q’s I could deal with. My client chuckled at yet another indication that this was not your typical salon. Shortly thereafter I was back in ‘the zone’ – that happy place uninhabited by pigs, teenagers or anything else in the world but me and my creativity.  Once the caramel highlights had receded down the driveway, I scurried off to find my son, grabbing a bag of small red potatoes. I found Avery and the 3 escapees at the top of the hill on a treeless plateau formerly used for a large garden.

Surprisingly, the pigs weren’t interested in food, perfectly happy to nose-plow virgin territory. We tried to curtail their wandering into the thick surrounding woods by using long dead tree branches,  a bad imitation of what we’d seen 4H kids do.  My great idea?  To rope them. This was squelched by Avery’s lampooning of me being garden-plowed behind a 400 lb. runaway pig. 

Finally we coaxed them onto a two-track encircling the garden that led downhill towards the barn. As I got ahead of them an inspiration came. Picture the scene in “Funny Girl” where Fanny Brice lets it rip at the helm of a New York harbor ferry,  only nix Babs and insert me belting “SOOEEEYY!" at the helm of a muddy two-track. 

Miraculously, the pigs started following me. I pied-pipered them all the way down the hill, through the narrow doorway of the lower barn and into a stall, Avery bringing up the rear. Was it luck, will power or my inner Streisand? Or was it the curious fashion-pairing of muddy Sorrells and a magenta cashmere skirt?  All I know is that by the end of it, aggravation subsided into the satisfaction of manipulating three more wayward corkscrewed curly-ques back into place.