Happily Ever Esther Read online

  We corralled the escapees and worked to get them closer to the road, but they settled in between the pool and the tennis court of the very nice house they had chosen to visit. (For the record, Campbellville is a very classy area, with a lot of very wealthy residents, many of whom probably wouldn’t take kindly to a group of cows popping in for a game of tennis.) The cows left footprints all over the yard and crapped everywhere. (And these were not simple “cow pies” either: the cows were stressed, so it was very messy poop.) Poor Denver was covered in it.

  Ruth called for a trailer to help us move the cows back to the farm, which we were grateful for, but at the same time she was kind of taking over the whole scene. She was telling people what to do, directing the film crew, telling them where they could go and where they couldn’t go, and suggesting they assist us with the cows. So while she was helpful in calling for the trailer, we weren’t crazy about the idea of her trying to take over an area that was not hers to take over, especially when we were already riled up and trying to get the situation under control. We waited an hour for someone to show up with a trailer, but despite all of our efforts, we were unable to herd the cows into it.

  And that’s when the police showed up.

  Yes, our cows’ little adventure had now attracted the attention of the local authorities. As if we hadn’t had enough to deal with in the moment. The camera crew probably loved it, but while drama and conflict make great television, they’re not so much fun for the people actually dealing with the situation.

  We learned that having cows loose so close to the Canadian National Railway train tracks had forced the tracks in that area to be shut down. (Hitting a large cow could potentially derail a train—and you’ll recall how huge Denver is.) I was mortified. Derek and I profusely apologized to the cops, who were not amused. The officers told us to “just get the cows.” I kept bouncing back and forth between the cows and the cops, trying to provide updates and do everything I could to make sure the police officers weren’t mad.

  I didn’t know how serious any of this actually was, and when the police officers told me CN Railway was holding up trains because of us, I assumed that meant we’d be facing ridiculous fines. Surely this had to be a huge problem for them, and we didn’t want this to be our first real introduction to the neighborhood. I was picturing newspaper headlines that read “Esther Opens New Sanctuary, Dads Have No Idea What They’re Doing!” or “Pair Fined $10,000 for Disrupting Rail Service with Rogue Bovines.”

  Since at this point I knew the cows were safe, even though we still needed to get them home, I was more concerned about the ramifications of the day’s adventure now that I realized the scale of what had happened. Amazingly enough, the police officers left—to deal with another cow situation! Fortunately, those cows weren’t ours, and we suddenly felt a million times better knowing we weren’t the only dummies chasing cows around Campbellville that day. It turned out this was actually a fairly common occurrence, so all we got was a stern talking-to. That said, it was still an unbelievably intense day, and we have no intention of reliving it anytime soon.

  Five hours later, after many failed attempts with the trailer and much deliberation, we started walking the cows back to our property. We had people on either side of us, a car in front, the trailer behind—cameras rolling, quite a procession. I’d calmed down substantially by that point, so I took a selfie with the cows behind me. But Derek wasn’t seeing the humor in the situation yet, so I took only one and then put the iPhone away.

  Thus chastised, I sank into my own thoughts. I’d felt a bit better after the police officers left, but I was still tense, and we still didn’t have the cows home. The more I thought about what had happened, the worse I felt. What if the cops had felt they needed to shoot the cows? (Of course this is where my mind goes.) How would people have any faith in us as a sanctuary if just weeks after we took in these animals, they escaped and got killed? What if this had meant the end of the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary? We would have had to sell the farm we just got. I realized how quickly things could go from simply wrong to ruined. All because of a crappy fence.

  We finally were closing in on home, thank goodness. But that would be too easy, right? It seemed like the bovine bunch had enjoyed their field trip, their temporary taste of freedom, because they suddenly veered onto the neighbor’s property again. But that’s not what they actually were thinking. Once we put two and two together, we realized that was the path the cows had taken when they escaped; they were going back the way they’d gone before. We kept trying to get them to the driveway, but they had other plans and cut right through the neighbor’s front yard, around the side of the house, and behind their pool, toward the forest that borders our properties.

  At least the cows knew their actual destination: Denver and Pouty went right back onto our property. But Jasmine must have gotten spooked. She carried on past the opening and started walking along our back fence, toward the train tracks again. I was screaming for somebody to come help, because Derek and the others had continued on behind Denver and Pouty, assuming I was right behind them pushing Jasmine along. By the time Derek and Ruth realized we were on the other side of the back fence, I was alone with an upset cow who still wanted to follow her friends, despite their being on the other side of a wire fence.

  Once Derek and the others got Denver and Pouty safe inside the barn, I yelled to them, asking for wire cutters so I could cut the fence to get Jasmine back in. It felt like I waited forever for them to show up with the cutters—I’m sure it was only a few minutes, but I had no way to keep Jasmine from running off, and I was afraid that she’d get back onto the tracks (they were just fifteen feet away), and what if a train came? Would she run? Would she know which way to turn? Luckily, she stayed with me until I had the cutters in hand. I cut the fence, and I trampled down the bushes to get them low enough for Jasmine to step over, clearing a path for her to get back in. Without too much fuss, she finally stepped over them to rejoin Denver and Pouty.

  Honestly, if we’d wanted any of them to get out it would have been Jasmine, because she’s the calmest of the cows. She also has something called slipper foot, which makes her hooves curl up like a genie’s slipper. It’s either genetic or possibly from lack of maintenance, but the advantage to us is that it makes her slower. It’s cute but probably a pain for her, so we’re trying to fix it with vet trimmings, and slowly but surely, her hooves are getting better.

  So for the moment, all was well again… except that we were now left with holes that needed to be repaired: the one they escaped from originally and the new one we had just made for Jasmine. It’s all a learning curve. We thought we had the fences built properly, but Captain Dan proved us wrong. So we reinforced and built better fences when we moved the cows to the next pasture, thinking we’d really done it right this time… and then the cows proved us wrong once again. But as we go along and discover all the things we don’t know, it just helps us learn and get better. I mean, really. You can’t expect a kilted Realtor and a magician to know all this stuff right off the bat, can you?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We’d been at the farm for about seven months and thought by now Esther’s attitude would be back to normal. We were wrong. Our formerly sweet, laid-back pig-daughter still had a terrible attitude. While we’ve heard this kind of insolent phase often occurs with teenage girls, we did not expect it with our still-young sow.

  It was obvious that we had fence issues everywhere, and nobody seemed more focused on bringing them to our attention than Esther. Attempted jailbreaks were a daily occurrence. Even with me or Derek as a personal escort, she made it her sole purpose in life to find and exploit any weaknesses she came across. She would get funny sometimes: She’d just stop at a spot she knew was questionable and look back at us. It was like she was saying, “You know I can get out there anytime I want, right?” She seemed to be taunting us. Sometimes she’d just remind us she knew there was more to see on the other side of the fence, but she wouldn�
��t push it. Other days, nothing could hold her back.

  Since the move, Esther’s go-to place has always been the woods. There must be something about the forest floor that pigs absolutely love. The ground is soft, and when she would get out there, she’d constantly look for bugs and roots to eat. We’d seen the same behavior in our backyard in Georgetown, but now it was on a much larger scale. At the farm, we finally got to see firsthand how far a pig will travel in a day when it has the space and the ability to do so. Esther would literally walk for miles, going from one end of the farm to the other. Sometimes she and I would be out for just twenty to thirty minutes, doing a quick lap of the space we intended her to explore. But more often than not, a quick walk would turn into a two-hour adventure.

  Esther would get so angry when we told her she couldn’t explore wherever she wanted. We’d freed her from the suburbs and introduced her to this wide-open environment, full of mystery and adventure, and here we were reining her in, for fear she’d get hit by a train or shot by a hunter or the police or God knew what else might happen. So we were doing what we thought was best, but as she saw it, we were keeping her from following her dreams. We were those awful parents ruining their teenage children’s lives by not allowing them to be free and explore the world.

  It kind of reminded me of my parents. When I was in high school, they didn’t want me going to outdoor parties with my friends. At the time, I couldn’t understand what their problem was, why they were so concerned about a bunch of hormonal teenagers getting their hands on alcohol and having parties in the middle of a forested ravine. What could go wrong?

  Granted, I don’t think Esther was looking to hook up with a bunch of drunk wild boars in the woods. (Although you’d better believe we’d get a few more great book chapters out of it if she did!) And my parents obviously weren’t being as unreasonable as I thought they were at the time, although I’ll never admit that to their faces.

  With Esther, I suddenly found myself thinking and feeling like any parent who feels they have a problem child on their hands. Everything we were doing to protect her came from a place of love. (OMG, I even sound like my mother. It’s worse than I thought!) But seriously, we wanted Esther to have fun and love her new home. The property just wasn’t ready for her yet, and she didn’t understand that. We felt awful about it, but we had no choice but to get firm with her and make sure we always had eyes on her. We would accompany her everywhere she went. She didn’t appreciate the chaperoning one little bit; she’d try to evade us every chance she got. And of course, it was no picnic for us wardens either. It’s not like we had all this free time and energy to shadow Esther every time she started to wander—which was often.

  I’ve never been particularly drawn to the idea of being a parent. I’ve always been an animal person. I like pets. Hell, I love pets. That’s my idea of family. Tiny humans… not so much. At first, that was a bit of an issue for Derek and me, because he wanted kids, to the point that it was almost a game-changer for us. Funny enough, over time each of us started coming around to the other’s position. I became more willing to start an actual family, while he became less so. Here we are fifteen years later, and still no kids. Well, no human kids.

  Either way, I never understood the whole super-protective “keep your kid in a bubble” behavior I had seen from some of my friends. A few years before Esther came along, I was in Amsterdam with my best friend, Michelle—the same friend who would later unfriend me on Facebook for missing a housewarming party. One night, we went on a pub crawl, and at one stop I realized I’d lost sight of her. I eventually found her on the patio, leaning against a wall with a drink in her hand, sobbing like a baby. I was immediately concerned and asked her what was wrong: “Did somebody hurt you? Steal your wallet?” (You know I’ve always had a flair for dramatics, but I’m even more prone to hyperbole if I’ve had a drink or two.)

  She replied: “I miss my daughter.”

  Not having expected something so minor to be the problem, I immediately started to laugh. “We’ve only been gone for a week and a half!” I said. “Get ahold of yourself!” I’m typically a sensitive guy, but I wasn’t exactly sober, and this clearly wasn’t my finest moment. Later on, I felt bad about it. But to be totally honest, I really didn’t understand how you could miss somebody so much that you’d be driven to tears after only ten days apart.

  Then Esther entered our lives, and on the first trip Derek and I took that lasted more than a couple of days, I found myself crying my eyes out. I stood on a beach in Negril, Jamaica, watching the most incredible sunset, a piña colada in my hand. And there was Derek, laughing at me while I cried about how much I missed my daughter. My 650-pound, four-legged, snouted daughter. I had become that parent I used to think was so ridiculous, and I never saw it coming.

  I should probably take the time to apologize to my parents for being so obnoxiously insistent in my teen years that they were ruining my life, or whining about how mean they were for not letting me do every crazy thing I tried to do. And also to Michelle for laughing at her when she cried. Who would have thought that a pig we couldn’t keep out of the woods would be the thing that made me realize what an insensitive jerk I had been?

  I wish I knew why that parental feeling had come with Esther. I’ve always had dogs and cats in my life, and I’ve loved every single one of them very much. But there’s something different about Esther. She’s not like a dog or a cat. I don’t know if it’s her eyes, the particular way she looks at you. Or if it’s the way she behaves, that sense of mischief and curiosity we see every day. Maybe it’s just the knowledge of what her life could have been, and how guilty I feel for supporting the meat industry for so long. I’m not 100 percent sure exactly what it is, but I am sure there is something undeniably humanlike about her, and it completely changed me. It brought out a feeling of needing to protect her, in a way I assume new parents feel about their infant children. And while I realize it’s not easy to protect children in today’s world, at least most parents have the advantage of being bigger than their kids. I had a child triple my size (and then some) who desperately wanted to forage in the woods, with all the accompanying dangers.

  In a sense, it made me all the more relieved that we finally had her out on a farm, despite the many challenges that came along with it. She must have felt awfully constricted in our small house and backyard. Out here, she could finally be herself. And now, I can’t even imagine how horrifying it must be for pigs squeezed into tiny cages at a factory farm. I just wish we could save every pig from that fate.

  When we first moved to the farm, I’d leave the house not dressed properly to be out for long, especially in the mornings. I was usually still wearing my super-fancy bathrobe and maybe a pair of plaid flannel pants—assuming the weather required pants, that is—and my new go-to shoes since moving to the farm: Crocs.

  I know what you might be thinking: I can’t believe the father of a fashion icon like Esther T. W. Pig wears Crocs! But if you are, you obviously haven’t tried them. They’re like little ugly clouds for your feet. Heaven. You’re not likely to find me hitting the town in such frightful footwear, but when you’re spending several hours a day on pig patrol, your top priority is happy feet, not striking poses on the red carpet. I guess that’s just another concession I’ve made in becoming a “parent.”

  Anyway, my questionable outfits and I would end up on parade in the forest, Esther loving every minute of it, while I was running through all of the possible things that could go wrong. I’d be trying to figure out if she was going to turn around on her own, or if I was going to need to start World War Pig by turning her around myself. What if she made a run for it and managed to get to the road? I was in a bathrobe, for Christ’s sake. Can you imagine this scene when driving to work on a Tuesday morning? You happen across a man in the middle of the road, wearing a robe (probably an open robe), fighting with a 650-pound pig. No one needs to see that, particularly not one of my neighbors. I soon adjusted my outfits to include pants a
nd shirts at all times, if for no other reason than to avoid potentially humiliating situations. I still wore my Crocs, though. You’ll have to pry my Crocs off my cold, dead (probably from too much walking) feet.

  As the weeks went by, I had also learned that problems would always occur when we were trying to direct Esther. She would get angry when we tried to make her change direction. Sometimes she’d freak out and bite, while other times she’d see that we were going to block her and she’d duck and try to go around us. And she always had the advantage because she was low to the ground. She could burrow under sticks that were poking me in the face, making it incredibly hard to keep up with her. And she’s not like a dog—she doesn’t like being chased any more than she likes being blocked, so that doesn’t help the situation.

  But what choice did I have? We had seen previously that the minute Esther thinks she has you beat, you’re done for. We couldn’t let her win the battle of the woods. If we did, we’d never keep her contained. So we didn’t let up, and neither did she. We’d pick up a big stick and block her way with it, using trees to brace one end of the stick, holding the other end so she couldn’t pass. She’d bite at the stick and try to run, which we hated, because it was usually across rough terrain.

  While that was dangerous for us, our biggest fear was that she would injure herself. We knew that pigs, particularly very large ones, are prone to problems with their legs and hips. It becomes an even bigger problem as they get a bit older. They’re bred to grow so large, so quickly, that their joints, ligaments, tendons, and so on can’t handle the stress of the weight of their bodies. Also, veterinarians typically aren’t as savvy about pigs as they are about dogs and cats, because it’s not common for somebody to come in with a 650-pound pig and ask the vet to do thousands of dollars’ worth of surgery to fix an injured leg.