The Chief Shepherdess by Zoe Colville

Author:Zoe Colville [Zoë Colville]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473599826
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2023-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Sass Queens

‘Pigs are drama queens, babe,’ Chris warned me. ‘When we put the ear tags in, they’ll squeal. Especially these pigs.’

‘Why especially these?’ I asked him.

‘Because up to now they’ve been wild. They’ve been in the woods foraging for food – basically they’ve been living their best life out there. Which is great for them, except they’ve had no handling. So they’re not used to people, and now we’re trying to get up close and personal.’

In early 2020, Ian asked us for help tagging pigs on his farm over in East Sussex. He’s been such a source of support and advice to Chris and me that we were more than happy to go – and his farm’s a great place to visit. I was especially looking forward to visiting the collie puppies.

When pigs leave their birthplace, they have to be ear-tagged to ensure they can be traced. The tag goes through the flap of their ear, a bit like being stapled. (The whole process reminds me of having your ears pierced with a needle gun, which stings for a few seconds.) Pigs have very large ears, so you’d think tagging would be quite an easy job – but you’d be wrong. You have to hover the tagging gun extremely carefully and get it in the right position before you start. If you mess up, you’ve wasted your one chance and you won’t be getting a second try. The pig will make sure of that. Once it gets riled, it doesn’t want to know.

My job was to stand next to the trailer’s lightweight metal gate to make sure it was opened and closed at exactly the right moment to let the boys in or out. But one decided she had other ideas about how to spend her afternoon. She put her nose under the bottom bar of the trailer gate and briskly levered it upwards. I had a few seconds’ warning but I didn’t react quickly enough: I completely underestimated the strength of a pig and didn’t know how sturdy their snouts are. I certainly wasn’t expecting the whole gate to come flying up at me – but it wasn’t anchored down and the pig lifted it right off its hinges. Out of the blue, it smashed straight into my eye socket and sent me staggering backwards, clutching my face. I really did see stars: the trailer and farmyard were spinning for a moment and the pain was bloody intense.

Chris had been looking at the pig and not at me, which meant he didn’t see how hard the gate had hit me. He reacted the way I would have done if he’d had a harmless, slightly ridiculous accident – he burst out laughing. ‘Oh, my God!’ he cried. ‘Emergency! Emergency! Call 999! Tell them to come and sort out her eyebrows!’

Ian, though, was striding towards me. ‘Are you okay, Zoë?’ he asked.

‘Um. Er.’ I was finding it quite difficult to speak. My eye socket really, really hurt.

‘Chris,’ Ian said, ‘that gate hit her pretty hard.

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