*Fair warning, this blog post is about a pig with an injured penis. There are many pig penis pictures and much pig penis humor (or at least attempts at it). *
So, as you may know, we got a pig a few months back. Now, the main purpose of having a pig was to quell rumors that the missionaries were wanting everyone to remove their pigs from the village, but our pig offered something more than just its presence. It offered the value of having town pig blood!
To explain that concept, let me show you a totally different pig! This pig isn’t ours; I call her Fat Sow, seeing as she’s a fat sow.
She’s treated well despite being an entitled pain in the butt. She’s a pure blood town pig and she didn’t come cheap. Three guys pitched in and bought her at a price 200% higher than the normal going rate for a piglet. The local pigs look wild, act wild, and they don’t fatten up very well. The three guys who bought the expensive fat sow are confident that they will be able to make their money back in short order and at the same time they expect they’ll be able to improve the general quality of pigs in the area.
The best part is, she didn’t mate with just any boar; she mated with our town pig (hereafter referred to by his name, Schnitzel)! The two most valuable pigs in the area got together and made five golden children, all full-blooded town pigs — exciting days for Kovol pig breeding! And then a dog came in and killed all the piglets. Such is Kovol pig breeding.
But don’t you worry, we were not exclusive with Schnitzel. Nay, nay, Schnitzel was set to go on tour! His breeding circuit started when our team was fixing to go to the field conference. While we went off to town to gather with other missionaries, refresh, and worship the Lord together; our Pigolo was fulfilling his mission to be fruitful and multiply by gathering with six sows in the hamlet of Kols.
After returning from conference refreshed and ready to get back into language and culture study, I thought I’d make a quick trip to pick up our stud. Kavaluku, the man who was in charge of Schnitzel down in Kols, was a little hesitant, however. He was telling me that our pig had given a bit too much of himself and wasn’t doing well.
I thought I understood what he meant. There is a common idea in the surrounding area that when a man or beast gives too much of his Precious Bodily Fluids, that man will become lean and wiry. This is the explanation for why men go bald, why women tend to be…plush, while men tend to be muscular, and of course why uncastrated pigs are scrawny while castrated pigs are fat.
I expected that our pig, foraging for his own food, would lose some weight on the trip. Surely that’s what Kavaluku meant when he said the pig gave too much.
Yeah, that’s not what he meant! Turns out, our pig’s penis fell out. That’s what it means to give too much!
But where are my manners, why don’t you meet our pig, Schnitzel!
And meet the Legend
It’s always a bit of a shame to see a Legend being dragged through the mud like this.
When I first saw him, the pig got up to greet me. However, while standing his Legend got stuck between the toes of his back leg. If he’d stand with that foot he’d step on his penis, but if he’d stand with his other foot he’d stretch it like an exercise band. It was like some masochistic choose-your-own-adventure book that just kept flipping between the same two pages.
So if you’re not familiar with pig penises, let me describe for you the main features. It’s quite like a dog’s penis in that it is usually internal and hidden inside a fuzzy penis pouch down on the belly. But, similar to a dog, the business end of it will come out when there’s work to be done. The shape of it, however, is unique. It has a hooked tip which he uses to screw into the sow to hold on tight.
My best guess is that he must have been holding on tight one day when the sow decided she wanted to be somewhere else. In doing so she flipped his fuzzy penis pouch inside out and herniated some of his muscles in the process, removing his ability to retract.
His internal bits, now being external, were getting dried out and chapped. Of course, the pig’s solution was to rub mud on it, so now they were chapped and caked in mud. Also, it seemed to me the pig’s back was hunched, so he apparently couldn’t relax.
Steve and I came back the next day to see what we could do. Basically, the plan was to clean it up, rub some Vaseline on it, and see if it wanted to go back in. The cleaning itself was pretty intense and despite much lubrication , the base of it was far too swollen and crusty to want to go back. We had to settle for just bandaging it up and giving it time to soften.
When we came back the next day the pig had visibly relaxed, his back was no longer arched in pain. He even showed us he could still urinate, which was something we were concerned about.
This time it was less crusty and not caked in mud. My sister had suggested icing it to bring the swelling down; that worked wonders. My dad had suggested pouring sugar on it. Apparently he had had success in the past sugaring up prolapsed sow uteruses (uteri?), but as much as I wanted to write about a sugared pig penis, the ice was more practical.
That session ended with a partial success. Stacie had sent along some old pajamas to hold things in place, but unfortunately Schnitzel wasn’t willing to be the pig in PJ’s. There was much amusement among the people, however, to see a pig all dressed up and no place to go.
The next week, however, became a lesson in futility. I kept expecting that one of the days I’d be able to tuck everything away nice and neatly, but I always seemed to come to the same point. Every day or so the base would come out again and we were back to square one. One day I tried suturing it, but that didn’t hold either.
It’s kind of like if you took a balloon and filled it with more balloons and a bouncy ball; and the bouncy ball had to go into one of the balloons, but you weren’t sure which; and also the balloons continue to force the ball out as you’re trying to put it in; and also it’s squealing like a stuck pig and peeing on you (and sharing other liquids too). And it stinks.
On one day, there were only some teenagers around to help hold Schnitzel down. It started well, but on that day he began sharing so many… other liquids, that the teenagers began gagging and turning away. They were pretty useless as far as keeping the pig held down and I had to call it quits early.
Eventually we gave up on putting it back, hoping that he could just let it all hang out. Unfortunately, pig penises are not meant for the external world. Besides the normal hazards of the world (such as logs, curious dogs, or that time he cut himself on a machete lying on the ground), his internal bits just kept getting chapped!
On one instance I was feeding him and inspecting a particularly bad-looking chapped bit. He started to pee so I stepped back, not wanting to be in the splash zone. To my surprise, the urine began streaming out of the chapped wound I was looking at, straight out the side of the penis! A few days later Steve got in there and cleaned it up a bit (we had let the crusted mud stay on since it protected from flies).
Steve revealed it was way worse than we thought! The skin was black and necrotic, and the infection was advanced and eating away the flesh. If left untreated, no doubt the infection would spread to the rest of his body. While we were discussing the issue with the village, the pig made an appearance, revealing that the tip of his penis had fallen off completely! While we had previously considered removing the penis altogether, we were afraid it would kill him so we put it off as long as we could. We were down to our last resort now, however. It was time to amputate !
We weren’t sure how to cut a penis off. Do you hack with machete or slice with razor? We went with the razor. Could you imagine if we missed? We made a tourniquet with a zip tie, turned inside out so it wouldn’t ratchet, and we had blood-clotting medicine. The Kovol people even have their own blood-clotting medicine made from banana sap, so we had some of that as well. Last summer we had a vasectomy doctor visit, so we had a heap of partially used lidocaine for the pain.
That overcast day we tied him up on the volleyball court, pinned him down, lidocained him up, and as quickly as I could, the deed was done. It took a while to get the bleeding to stop, but eventually that was settled. Later that day the pig had a good pee as well! High fives all around!
So is that it? Did the pig finally get his happy ending? Well, no, unfortunately not… The pig looked decently well and happy for about four days. Then the arched back returned, and he started getting swollen. He lay down under my stairs and didn’t really get up, even to eat. We now know that the issue was that he had stopped peeing, but at the time we weren’t sure. We knew that if we waited too long, the meat that he could offer would become useless, as pigs who die of illnesses are not fit for consumption (culturally or health-wise).
Eventually it was clear that it was time to put an end to the pain (and the time sink). When our friend Silas shot him, the arrow pierced clean through his chest; Schnitzel just glanced over without making more than a grunt.
His bladder, we found, was swollen to about the size of a man’s head and everything smelled like old urine. At least the people were still willing to eat the meat! While we took a token amount for ourselves, we distributed most of it to the two villages that helped us feed him the most often.
I’m trying to wrap this story up with some sort of moral or conclusion, but I can’t seem to think of one. I guess I’ll end with an ode to our pig:
Farewell good Schnitzel. We cast you before the swine yet they trampled you under their feet and turned again to rend you. Your spirit was willing, but your flesh was weak.
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