Man vs Piglets, day 1
In the morning, we did two things. I went out and tracked the missing piglet, and HW moved the "good piglet" from the greenhouse to her own bed.Right at dawn, he went to the greenhouse, looking for the piglet. We knew she'd be cozy, that she'd take liberties with the chicken hay fort and make herself comfortable. She'd taken apart some bales and made a huge haystack, and then buried herself in it. He had to dig for her. Then he grabbed her by two legs, a front and a back (picture that) , and carried her outside, from the greenhouse to piglandia. I saw him coming down the trail hanging a starfished pig, head limp. She made a couple of slightly irritated grunts, like "Don't bogart the covers", but that was it. Her eyes didn't open.She slept right through it! HW slung her into her bed in the pig palace, mounded the hay up over top of her, and she didn't twitch. She stayed there, soundly asleep, until past noon. I had to reach into the hay before I left for work to be sure she was really in there. Dead to the world at noon.I set out in the morning to track the missing pig, which was very informative. She had practically followed us back, and stayed out of sight in the treeline, but used our trails and come right up to where she (a foot tall pig), could see the greenhouse. She'd popped in and out of the trees looking at the greenhouse from different directions, walked up and down our driveway, out and back on the road a fair ways, had a look at the quad trail, meandered through the orchard, and then gone back out where she'd originally jogged, into the woods. In other words, she knew exactly where we lived, and where her sister pig was, by the time we went to bed.Pigs don't mind using trails and roads one bit, and walk in straight lines on them, but off-trail, they move in long S-curves. Also, they retrace their own steps, walking almost in their own footsteps. Hoofsteps? The little bit of snow on the ground was nice, kept all the information.I put out sprinklings of feed just a bit closer in than her nearest look-sees, knowing she would probably follow her own tracks back in in the morning, which, judging by Sleeping Beauty, might be quite late in the day.HW got home before me. At work, I got a text: Zero pigs.Okay, now they're officially both at large. Awesome.Later I found out the details, that he had walked up and found Adventure Pig standing outside the electric fence, Good Pig standing inside the electric fence, and on his approach, both of them took off, Good Pig whizzing through the two-strand like it wasn't there.When I got home, both pigs were eating from one of my bait piles right next to the greenhouse (we considered using the greenhouse to trap them), and spent the evening scuttling around in the treeline, watching me watch them. At least they're together, and happy.We raised up the strands of the fence and turned it off, hoping that Sleeping Beauty would give the pigpen rave reviews on Travelocity and both pigs would choose to retire in there together come nightfall. Then we would sneak up in the night to restore the fence, trapping them behind the electric tape (again), bahaha!Because that's been working so well thus far.Actually, my week-long plan to get the pig back is ahead of schedule. Except for the zero pigs development.