This is Tuesday evening. Last Friday afternoon, one of our sows gave birth to her first litter of piglets, and tragically turned out to be a monster, rather than a mother, to them, killing 8 of the 13. Those who had escaped through the pen bars or been pushed out, we brought into our family room where they could be safely contained in the old dog crate, and bottle fed, first on colostrum supplement, then on the milk replacer.
From that moment of deciding to interfere with Nature at its brute beastliest, to try to redeem what ought to be, we had one piglet who was not long to this world. Gradually it gave up and expired. But, oh joy! four hearty little piggies remained, 3 boys and a girl.
That first 28 hours or so, we were all pretty good sports about losing sleep. Every two hours or less, these little screamers wanted their food, which, while it is colostrum, is not filling and satisfying. So no one was thinking, "wee, wee, wee" when it came to their care. Regardless of whose was the duty, we all awoke, every time.
Switching over to the milk replacer, they all became quieter, more peaceful after feedings and during, and proved all the adages about how smart and sweet piglets (and pigs) can be. It has been a huge relief to have their feeding schedule lengthen out over the past few days. We have been posting pictures on facebook to share the joy, and joking about the bacon bits.
Tonight, we are losing one. We are feeling the battle fatigue tonight, which we seemed to set at naught during our all-nighter phase. To feel insufficient is humbling, and not at all welcome.
How do we always fall for this? (at least, in some degree) You take your job seriously, and you treat it not as a job to be done, but a cause for devotion. You become personally invested, and so deeply involved, that when one little life looks like detaching and tearing the web of safety you have worked to weave, the indraft of cold reality's wind is a shock. Every. blasted. time. It can make you feel so utterly foolish, to find that you had forgotten, there is no guarantee.
Late in 2010, I wrote about a doomed effort to save some newborn kittens, and chronicled how the four became rapidly 3 and then 2 and finally 1, who stubbornly, cruelly if you can be jaded enough, and enchantingly hung on and seemed to prosper for eight and a half weeks. Tiny Kipling had become the fulcrum of my children's and my daily lives, so that when he finally expired, he left a titanic hole.
There was some really good and profound discussion at church the other day, about the perfection of Created Nature versus the corruption of Fallen Nature. One of the trains of thought I put out was: even in a ruined nature, we have still the call to be stewards. It is part of our purpose here, to "subdue and rule over" the creatures and the nature in which they and we live. It is part of our purpose, to seek God's wisdom for assessing a situation when something has gone clearly wrong, and deciding how to intervene. Sometimes, that decision may turn everything around for the good of all; sometimes, all we may glean from a failed rescue attempt is the scant comfort of knowing what to do, or to do better, or not to do, the next time.
There is still so much beauty in the nature that surrounds us, all of it precise and painful even in its wonder, and most often we look to it to be uplifted when we feel the weight of the ugliness in us. Oh, we of little faith! Is it not the reflection (however poor and shaky) of our Creator's beautiful image upon us, that moves us to seek affirmation in the rest of Creation? Because that is what we seek at such times, most truly and essentially. We look for the reminder that this is only a shadow, that God will not leave us like this, that He will make all things new, so they will work.
"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." 2 Corinthians 4:8-9
