The title of today's entry should be:

Full grown hog, on the way to the butcher, breaks lose in the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria and runs amuck through the court before being cornered in the back of the jury room.

This week was, after all, the annual 'take the pigs to market day'. Which, for all of you who have been reading our newsletters for several years know, is always worth a good story or two.
For recent examples see:

http://www.bullrunfarm.com/8-20-04__escaped_pigs.htm
or
http://www.bullrunfarm.com/1-15-03_pig_story.htm

This is because hogs, like most pigheaded creatures (a category which I include many species, especially humans) do not want to do what they don't want to do.

And being forced to leave a nice pasture with plenty of food and shelter and water is not something to which pigs usually willing submit.

And they especially don't want to do it if it means climbing up a ramp and into the back of a pick-up truck.

So, this time of year is the time of year us humans (and by that I mean me and anyone I can talk into helping me) attempt to show once more that we are in fact truly smarter than our pig brethren.

This entails, each year, devising a new and improved means of tricking the pigs to willingly get into the back of the truck.

Only, this year, I was not at the farm for pig loading day but instead I was all dressed up in a suit and tie sitting in a jury box.

I spent all week in a court room watching several attorneys explain how they spent several hundred thousand taxpayer dollars trying to prove that a woman who has lived and worked and paid taxes in the US for over 25 years filled out her citizenship forms wrong 15 years ago and therefore should now be kicked out of the country.

Among other things, I got to listen to opposing 'expert' witnesses try to define to everyone's satisfaction what exactly the correct definition of a Somalian clan was for immigration purposes back in 1990.

And while both professors (the expert witnesses) were really interesting chaps and while I would have enjoyed taking a class on Somalia and clan structure from either of them, I couldn't help but thinking (during breaks, of course) what fun my son was having loading nine 250 pound hogs into the back of the truck all by himself.

And thinking about how quickly my suit would be ruined if I wore it anywhere near those pigs.

(usually, I come away from 'pig loading day' coated from nose to boots in mud and other pig related matter).

And when I got home that evening from jury duty and asked 'How did it go?'

The answer was simply: 'It wasn't fun.'

(And not one for sharing details of humiliating experiences, he didn't elaborate).

So, no amusing hog story this year and for that you have only the US District Court to blame.