The young sow, the mother of the brood, had made for herself a fine bed of pinestraw under those thick-headed bull pines on the north end of the cornfield. I saw her at work one day, making preparations; and I took a foolish notion not to pen her in the stable lot, but to let her start her little ones in natural surroundings. It was to be her first brood, and she was a little wild. But my plan was more sentimental than wise. A man should take no chances with his stock when there are varmints about, especially with bacon where it is; for nowadays every little pig has a meaning and a value of its own. A few days after I had noticed the sow, when my mind was on going down to see her again, my attention was attracted in her direction by a great cloud of buzzards sailing and circling over the edges of the cornfield. You know what we think when we have such a gathering: either that some of the stock is dead, or that, venturing too far after temptingly green grass in the muddy rice field, a cow or an ox has become so bogged that it cannot extricate itself. At such times we have to be very quick to come to the creature’s assistance; for turkey buzzards will pick out the living animal’s eyes just as soon as it is seen to be helpless. The black vulture, our other scavenger, will not touch an animal until it is dead.
Naturally, I thought that the poor young sow had not been able to bring her young into the world, or that some of them died. Anyway, I hurried across the cornfield. On coming near the pines, buzzards began to flap up from the ground, while those in the sky veered away. What was my astonishment, and anger, too, at those black robbers when I saw, backed up against the stout bole of a pine, the plucky young mother, her bristles up, her eyes narrowed and bright, and with blood running down her face — while huddled beneath her flanks palpitated nine little pink-nosed babies! She had been standing off the buzzards — the big cowards that had come in a raiding party to steal her young. And she must have been holding her own pretty well, for the little pigs were not scarred, while the ground under the pines was strewed with a goodly number of black feathers. But I had not come too soon. I drove the young mother and her brood toward the stable and got her safely in a bed of straw under a shed. Then I revisited the pine thicket with my gun, laid down a preliminary barrage, dispersed the enemy with a curtain of fire; and I can report that he retreated in great disorder and that his losses were heavy. |
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