Getting Into Things #2

Speaking of pigs, I think I finally convinced my neighbors that I would kill their pigs of they didn’t pen them up. After giving the 3 warnings obligatory by kastom law and those damn things once again tore up the few remaining plants and dislodged the “nice, white” stones bordering my garden, I slowly, thoughtfully and very quietly retrieved my bush knife from the kitchen and got within 3 feet of one of them before it saw me and ran. I chased it, yelling and swinging my bush knife, over to their compound. It ran right towards their big bigfala (for protection???) and then stood still. There was a group of men sitting close by under a tree just watching. I once again said I’d kill their pig if they didn’t pen it up and they all just looked at me. I walked over to the pig and stuck it with the knife and it squealed. I didn’t actually stick it, more like poked it and it didn’t squeal too loud, but I think I made my point. One of them got up, put a rope around one of its legs and dragged it to the pen, squealing constantly and even louder than before. When I got back to my house, I just sat their laughing. It was about 2 months before the next pig incident. Hemia olsem! That’s the way things are here.

I try to follow the Buddhist idea of causing no harm, so it was with great trepidation that I poked the pig. I didn’t know how sharp my knife was and I really didn’t want to hurt it and it was white and oh wow, would even a small cut show. No worries, pig skin is very thick. But I extend this idea in other ways that are less easy. For awhile I was getting visits every night by hermit crabs pulling their shells along on their back. One even played with my big toe one night, tickling it with its antennae. One of the old women told me the hermit crabs carry stories from the black and white sea snakes (the poisonous ones) and then asked me what kind of dreams I had been having. Just the night before I had woken up from a dream in which whatever was happening made me laugh and my laughing woke me up. So now when the mamas collect hermit crabs to go fishing, I take a few of them out of the can and put them back in the bush. Probably doesn’t make up for the ones I use to fish with though. K And since I went fishing last, the hermit crabs have stopped visiting. However, these huge, I mean huge, land crabs have started visiting at night, usually after I go to bed. Their scrabbling noise wakes me as they crawl between the coconut leaf panels in my roof or dig their way under the walls. Haven’t found out what they portend yet.