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Some Pig!

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Beth-Ann sent a link to this video that has been viewed on You Tube well over one million times in the past two days. A baby goat at a petting zoo is in distress. Apparently the goat’s foot is stuck underwater and the animal can’t get out of the pond.

For reasons that will soon become clear, a pig is sent to the rescue.

Some people (and animals) are just good in a crisis. Others (like me), tend to stand around and watch, not knowing what to do.

Researchers have studied crisis situation response and based on their reports most people misjudge how they would respond in an emergency. We all tend to think we’d behave better than we actually do. A more common response is to over-think the situation, resulting in paralysis.

it is obvious that this heroic pig, let’s call him Wilbur, refrained from pre-judging the conditions and simply responded with common sense to the facts as they presented themselves to him.

Goat in trouble. Goat needs a helping push. Let’s swim out there and push the goat.

Not a lot of agonizing there about a possible lawsuit or getting in trouble for jumping in the pond or privacy worries should this wind up on You Tube or that a tabloid photographer would snap and distribute a topless pig photo or any squeamishness at all over possibly swallowing some goat flavored water – the pig simply did what had to be done!

Or maybe the pig thought the goat had found something good to eat and went out there to investigate. Heroism sometimes happens by accident.

A potentially drowning baby goat is not the same thing as Hurricane Katrina, but this is a good opportunity to note that what is left of September is still part of National Preparedness Month.

Of course, if I was a different sort of person, I would have been prepared to observe this several weeks ago!

Are you ready for an emergency?

87 thoughts on “Some Pig!”

    2. Holly, those are two great versions of that song about being ready. I heard Bill Monroe sing live a few times at Bean Blossom, a place in Indiana owned by Bill Monroe’s brother. He certainly was a great musician.

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    3. BiR, Holly’s two videos are: Golden Gate Quartet singing Walk in Jerusalem, and Bill Monroe singing the same song (although the song title on the video is Walking in Jerusalem.)

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  3. Morning all. Living on a busy street, I’ve had several opportunities to find out how I react in an emergency.

    Once I heard wheels screech and looked out to see a dog down in the street. I grabbed the tablecloth from the dining room table and rushed out. The woman who owned the dog was in a panic, so I stayed with her and the dog (used tablecloth to keep dog warm) until her neighbor who was a vet showed up. Since the dog owner was panicked, I asked the vet questions about what she should watch for over the next few days as he checked over the dog. Dog turned out OK – just major bruising.

    When my street was under major construction a couple of years back, a woman tripped on the unfinished street ledge and fell right onto her face on my driveway. Boy, do wounds on the face bleed. I was able to run instead and grab a kitchen towel and the phone to call 911. Kept the towel on her face until EMTs arrived (she brought me two nice new towels the next week). She ended up having two surgeries due to the fall!

    I also witnessed a scooter accident on my street. Again grabbed a blanket that was sitting on the sofa and ran out (this time I only had on one shoe, which I didn’t realized until the EMT mentioned it). I was able to hold the injured woman’s hand while the EMTs worked and also able to call her spouse on her cell phone to let him know she was going to HCMC. Assume this woman was fine, although based on what I could see, she probably had to have surgery on her leg and will have a doozy of a scar for life.

    Clearly grabbing a towel/blanket is a specialty of mine!

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    1. Some specialty, vs. Just you telling about these incidents has me concerned about you tripping rushing down all those front steps of yours.

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  4. Good morning. There are a lot of things I think I should do that I haven’t done. I think it would be good to have a generator to use as an emergency power supply, but I never find time to purchase one. I do have a kerosene heater to use to keep the house warm in an emergency and a supply of kerosene and we have put the heater to use a few times when we lost power in the winter.

    I don’t know if I am ready to walk in Jerusalem. I assume they are talking about heaven. My mother thought the Lord would take her. I’m not counting on that. Those old spirituals are great, but they haven’t converted me into a follower.

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  5. It depends on what kind of emergency. I’d most definitely prefer that the emergency didn’t involve blood of any kind. Once, while living in Cheyenne, I found a dog lying in the road that had obviously been hit by a car. I wrapped the dog in a blanket I had in the car, and drove him out the hospital at F.E. Warren Air Force Base where wasband worked, and I knew several of the doctors. It was a slow evening, and they mobilized all the necessary resources to x-ray the dog and patch him back together. I took the dog home with me, fed him, and kept him warm overnight. The next day I managed to find the owner and return him.

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  6. I haven’t been in many emergencies. Once our family was driving north for our two-week vacation in Minnesota. I was about 13. Just south of Saint Cloud we entered a summer thunderstorm of exceptional violence. Large hailstones began pounding the area. We were in our 1947 Cadillac convertible (how we got that car is a long story). Some hailstones began to punch right through the fabric of our roof.

    While Dad sped to Saint Cloud, where we might find overhead protection, I tried to protect my sister (two years younger), who was in the back seat with me. I threw a pillow over her, then placed my body over her so no hailstones would strike her. Dad got to a Standard gas station with a protective overhead roof, and that’s where we rode out the storm.

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  7. Having a child with brittle bone disease presented multiple opportunities for emergency response. The major bones in the leg really hurt when they snap. I got it down to a science-a handful of chewable grape Tylenol, into my son’s mouth, ice on his leg, scoop and dash to the car and a drive to the clinic or ER as required.. I actually got complaints from people when this happened at their house. Complaint number 1 “How could you be so damn calm?” Complaint number 2 “I was so upset after you left. I wish you’d called to check on me.”. I knew we were too calm when once we stopped at the McDonald’s drive thru for supper because we knew we’d be stuck in the ER for a long time.

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      1. BIR-He’s had 150+ broken bones and I actually lost track of which bones broke (Good mothers would have done better accounting). Luckily we had access to wonderful medical, PT, and a community of marvelous folks so it was manageable.

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  8. OT Some of you know there was drama yesterday when I discovered that someone had been able to use the number on my debit card to drain my only banking account of $3,000. I always had the card, but someone got the numbers and was able to use that to have a party at Macy’s and the Apple Store. None of my personal information seems to have been stolen except the numbers, and possibly the numbers connected to my name.

    Update: All is well. My card has been invalidated. The missing money has been restored by my bank. I can write checks, and I’ll soon have a new card.

    Many questions remain. Nobody yet seems to know how this happened. I’m not aware of having done anything risky. Indeed, I’ve done very little at all in the way of purchases. I don’t know who “eats” this loss . . . my bank or Visa or the stores that made the sales. I should be talking to St Paul police today, and I’ll share anything smart they have to say. Thanks for the concern and support expressed yesterday.

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        2. I never shop at Macy’s (Savers is more my style) and I recently bought a (refurbished) PC (not a Mac) so no need for me to shop at the Apple store. I suppose I could shop for Ipads, Ipods, etc. but I am just not interested in any of that right now. Also, a few days ago I had to point out that I wouldn’t steal my own daughter’s wallet – I also would not steal from a fellow Baboon. Really.

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    2. Steve – glad things moved so swiftly. I can tell you that it’s usually the stores who eat this kind of thing. I had a card used for $900 worth of stuff last month in NJ, where I haven’t been for decades. The card company called me because whatever computer algorithm they use spotted it as fraud. I did ask at the time who ends of eating these losses and the guy at the card company says that the stores usually take the fall. Apparently it’s at their end that they are supposed to be taking more precautions!

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      2. I’ve been giving this some thought. It really should be the sellers who pay, as it is their standards for security that determine whether or not there is a sale. To my knowledge, the only thing the thief had for making the purchase was the card number. Not the PIN. Not the little security code on the back of the card. I don’t even know for sure the thief had my name right. Macy’s accepted that for four purchases totaling $2,00, and the Apple Store accepted it for a thousand-dollar purchase. I’m not in that business, so maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t seem as if they exercised much restraint.

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        1. My daughter-in-law, who has worked at Apple Stores for years, says that to buy $1000 at an Apple store requires a card and two ID’s. She says to pay for anything requires a card and the security number or pin. You can order online that way but it requires the number off the back or the PIN. My son has twice in the last year had this done and used at restaurants and gas stations. He talked to the manager at one of the gas stations, who said 1) that you have to have a card to purchase at the station, that employees are not allowed to touch a card. 2) That there is no incentive for them to be careful because they are not responsible for it.

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        2. On the other hand, Steve, if it’s the seller left holding the bag, it won’t be long before stores won’t accept credit cards.

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        3. I think part of the business’s fee to collect through credit cards is covering the loss, but I think not $2000 and $1000 losses. MY d-i-l has Steve Wozniack as a customer at her Apple Store and she is required to ask for the ID’s and numbers from him, which they both think is funny.

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    3. I had my card number stolen once too. I have no idea where the thief got the number. The purchases were made in Florida, a place I’ve never been. Wells Fargo sent me an e-mail, then called me asking if I had charged new tires on my card in Florida. I had deleted the e-mail, thinking it was some opportunistic person seeking my identity, but I listened when I received a phone call asking the exact same thing. Wells Fargo immediately canceled my card and issued me a new one. I got a follow-up letter from them informing me that they (Wells Fargo) had paid the charges and were seeking the thief for reimbursement. The banks are able to track your spending patterns and are alerted when a purchase is made that doesn’t fit your pattern. I don’t say many good things about Wells Fargo, but in this case they were great.

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      1. I had something similar happen – charges were made in Europe or England (don’t remember exactly where) on my card; Wells Fargo caught it and called. It was good to get it stopped right away!

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      2. Heck, our bank called when Husband and I bought new cell phones and it seemed an out-of-the-ordinary purchase (we thanked them and assured the nice folks that yes, that really was us buying iPhones on a summer evening when we could have been outdoors enjoying the air).

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  11. Depends on what kind of an emergency. We’re usually covered for water, as we travel to Miller Spring every 6 or 7 weeks and fill up 50 gallons of cool, clear spring water. (Of course, I guess we aren’t covered at the end of that – should go twice as often.) We probably would only have enough food for 1 week if we lost electricity to our big freezer. Something to think about.

    But no matter what you plan for, something like Steve’s experience yesterday can “throw a brick through the window.” I don’t have the exact quote, but someone said something like “You make plans while God laughs.”

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  14. Completely OT: Husband just did one of the periodic “clean-ups” on our computer, and I CAN ACCESS YOU-TUBE HERE AGAIN. Thanks to several baboons for helping (Clyde, PJ, Krista, Linda) for helping me see them.

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  15. We are in a financial emergency. My wife’s medical bills for the last three months have come through. Medicare paid for almost all but what is left is quite a bit, which is due in 10 days. And she hit the medicare drugs doughnut hole. We picked up her drugs at Target. It was a lot. Now we are in Evan babysitting for five days. Sigh. Well, “panic” would be the better word.

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        3. Clyde, I think you’re safe to whine here. If you need help, you are among friends. I might whine someday too!

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  16. Like Krista, not only am I not on the rails, but I am woefully unprepared for any emergencies. If my wallet was stolen, I wouldn’t even know what cards were in there in order to cancel or replace them. If someone was hurt in front of my house, I would probably not even be able to find a clean towel or blanket so I couldn’t be like VS who is always ready with one of those. I’m definitely in the camp of those who stand around and watch wondering what to do.

    One time I almost did the “heroic” thing, but it wasn’t needed. Remember the winter before last when we had so much snow? I was on a city bus and at one of the bus stops, there was a guy in a wheelchair. The bus driver lowered the platform that allows wheelchair users to wheel themselves onto it…but this poor guy needed to wheel himself over a bunch of snow and ice to get to the platform. He was going back and forth, back and forth, trying to get enough of a good run so he could make it over this little hill and the bus was packed full of people just sitting there like stooges watching him do this for what seemed like ages. I thought, good grief, why the h*** doesn’t somebody get out and give him a push? It won’t take much to guide him over that mess. Just when it was obvious that nobody else was going to do it, so I better do it, he made it. That still bugs me, that out of a whole busload of people, nobody gave him a hand – me included. We obviously weren’t as smart as that pig.

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    1. I’ve been in that situation a number of times, too, Edith – immobilized though I knew what I (or someone) should do. I have a friend who is a role model for this kind of thing, and I’m getting braver.

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  17. At first I could not remember ever having dealt with an emergency. Then I remembered slicing open my thumb on the scene shop table saw in college. Felt the blade hit the pad of my thumb and jerked it back quickly. Hit the off button with the other hand and immediately grabbed my thumb to apply pressure. I remember asking the guy I was working with to get me a bandaid. “Why?” says he. Because I just cut my thumb on the saw. He started to panic. I am calmly bleeding. When he opened the first aid kit it was pretty much empty – no band aids, nothing even resembling a bandage-like-anything. Well get me some paper towels then. Again, “why?” So I have something to bleed into besides my other hand. “Oh. Yes.” With the wad of paper towel wrapped around my thumb, I walked across to the art wing of the building and asked the department secretary where they kept their first aid kit. “Why?” says she. Because I cut open my thumb on a saw in the theater department and we don’t have anything useful in our first aid kit. Oh, and I’d like to bleed into something other than these paper towels. “Yes,” says she. “This way.” It was in the pottery studio (useful to remember when I needed it a year later when I took sculpture – but for a less bloody injury). We wrapped it up nicely – by then I knew it wasn’t horrid, I wouldn’t need stitches, it was just gonna hurt like a sonofa for a good while (mostly took off a callous I had been building on the thumb). With my fine new band-aid and wrapper of gauze I marched back to the theater department and directly to our admin’s office. “Hi Jean,” I said. “Can you order a new first aid kit for the scene shop?” Again, “Why?” says she. “Because I just split my thumb open on a saw and had to go to the art department to get it bandaged.” “Oh my – are you okay?” “Yes. Just order us some band-aids please.” Within the week we had a brand new, fully stocked first aid kit.

    Then there was the late night drive across town from up on a ladder in a theater to bleeding Husband to emergency room in under 30 minutes. Or driving a co-worker who was feeling dizzy and her heart was racing (it had happened before – so she kinda knew what was up) to the ER…”say Anna, where is the closest ER? And can you drive me there?” Um, yah – let’s go – do you need help getting to the car? No? Okay. Let me know if that changes between here and the car…

    Nothing as dramatic as VS (one shoe or two), but I know how to get to medical help (or at least band-aids), so that’s something. Oh, and I don’t faint at the sight of blood – also a bonus.

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      1. Band-aids are expensive, Lisa. Colleges can’t afford to be handing them out to just anybody. Can you imagine what tuition would be if they did?

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  18. I feel lucky that my kids didn’t have many emergencies as I always wondered how I would respond. (the “when will I become a grown up” question rears its ugly head yet again).
    I would be good with blood and gore as that doesn’t bother me at all and I tend to remain calm.
    The most memorable was when son#2 fell down some steps when he was 18months old and broke his jaw. After his fall, his four front bottom teeth were lying flat, sticking out front. I called the dentist emergency line and the person misunderstood and thought my son was 18 years old. She suggested that I just push the teeth back into place. I didn’t think so!
    We took him into some after hours dentist where they did just that. Son#2 was pretty oblivious to pain at that point in his life and barely cried when he fell and not even when his jaw was popped back into place. There was nothing to wire to so we just had to let it heal. There was concern that his adult teeth might be affected but they came in fine except for some unusual color and texture which was not clearly related to the accident.

    His two visits to emergency rooms and ultimate hospitalizations for psychotic episodes were extremely scary and difficult but I was pretty calm on the outside then, too.

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    1. Mental health issues can be scary indeed, Lisa. And, when it’s your own child in question, I can well imagine that it would freak you out.

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    2. Lisa I think you mastered the core of maternal calm-fake it until you can make it. I think when we are calm it makes a huge difference to our kids.

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  19. Yesterday I turned the heat on for an hour or so. Weak moment. Being German I must now berate myself for it.

    I am not sure how I would react in an emergency, but my guess is you probably want to have somebody braver standing by just in case.

    WOT. Today is Bruce Springsteen’s birthday. He is 63.

    It is also the birthday of TGITH. Happy birthday, TGITH, if you are reading today. Enjoy!

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  20. Just back from having brunch with a friend whose husband is off on the kayaking trip with Hans. Some of you may have read the story in the news about the swarm of wasps that attacked a bunch of daycare kids on a walk in St. Paul neat the River Road sometime this past week. My friend was walking her dog when she came upon the screaming kids, one, a little girl with her whole face covered with the wasps. My friend didn’t know what to do and continued walking without stopping to assist the two daycare women who were with the kids. She is horrified that she walked away didn’t even think to call 911, despite the fact that she had her cell phone right there. Several days after the fact, she’s still beating herself up over the fact. She kept saying “How could I? I’m a mother. I just walked away. Had no idea what to do.”

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  21. My 6-month-old puppy, Bailey, once got into a nest of yellow jackets. I was looking at birds; he was snooping around in some grasses near the edge of a gravel road. He began yelping, then shrieking in pain and panic. The yellow jackets were burrowing into his fur. They were in his face, eyes, legs and back. He quickly learned what I meant when I shrieked, “RUN, Bailey! RUN!!!” I started running and he immediately began running and yelping with me. We ran all the way back to the building (work) and the yellow jackets were with him all the way. When we entered the building there were only a few left and they dropped off. He was howling with pain and fear. I took him to the vet where he was sedated and given cortisone injections. He was less than 15 pounds at that time and had been stung many, many times. They are fierce insects and can be dangerous. Their stings are very painful. Running was effective because they had a ground nest and they wanted him out of their territory.

    After that time, any time I shouted, “RUN!”, he ran.

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  22. Greetings! Fascinating stories everyone. I am semi-prepared for some things. I do have bandaids in my purse. For Y2K I invested in a 3-month supply of dried storable foods that I still have and use occasionally. I am totally unprepared financially for anything — no savings, no investments, no retirement, no IRAs, no 401k. I’ll be a Walmart greeter and living off my kids if something doesn’t change dramatically and SOON. I think being mentally prepared can take you through most situations though.

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    2. Joanne, I’m afraid that your situation isn’t unique, troubling as it is. As you all know by now, I’m an avid Freecycler. One of today’s Freecycle emails is from someone asking for a portable heater. The person states that she is living in an unheated house and would like something other than her blankets to keep her warm this winter. It just breaks my heart that some people struggle so. Hope your situation improves soon, Joanne.

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    3. I agree about being mentally prepared, Joanne. You certainly can’t predict what the emergencies will look like in your life, but you can develop a practice like “OK, BREATHE”, or “I CAN HANDLE THIS” in your thinking that could very well get you through.

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  23. busy and e challanged weekend. the emergencies i had envisioned when i read this in the wee hours of sat am before the internet became my combatant issue forthe weekend was thinking of how i reacted in hypothetical instances. when i read the stuff here many are ones i have lived through. believe it or not i do not have docile children, scars and stitches are our history. b/a has the broken bone thing down for a tough shake of the dice reasons and i dont want to compare my experiences with hers , but the rest of you.. i saw an old clark gable movie over the weekend where he was the owner of a casino who provided well for his family but had his doctor tell him if he didnt change his life he would die of stress related implosions. i can relate. the doctor said most people have an emergency stressful moment happen every 3 or 4 months years whatever, you the doctor said have it happen 8 times a day and it is having a toll on the underlying well being. i think sometimes my inclination to go for the gusto has me scrambling harder than i should to keep on an even keel. that plus the shake the dice attitude i attack life with leaves a legacy of learning for my little uns. broken stuff on me because i wouldnt think of asking someone else to do something that dangerous. the battle of financila walls closing in are all to familiar and i feel for clyde and joanne, they got theirs without beuing maniacs and thats not right, the teeth in the smashed bed post incident had almost become a familiar memory. 5 am my son bouncing on the bed with his brother and sister laughing and partying down until he did the face plant on the walnut upright. all front teeth pushed back to a 45 degree andgle and the screams….. well i called my honeopaths cell phone and she answered at 5am and told me to pull the teeth straight and jam them back in there give him the remedy required at once which would make the odds good we would be ok form initial trauma and then follow it up with anther that would heal stuff. it worked. holding kids for stitches and being the voice of reason when the terror struck others in the vicinity need reassurance. i need to mind my own business sometimes but emergencies seem not to be the time that occurs to me. i take whatever needs to be done and try to mainline it to expedite the prcess so we can get to the emergency room and wait for 3 1/2 hours.
    in china i have had my wallet lifted twice. credit cards and money gone in a moment of inattention. my life is a moment of inattention so i am probably lucky i can only recall it twice, the bad news is i tend to travel at the same time so it was at the end of my april trip both times and china shuts down for a week on may day. all the banks close, the businesses are open to sell but not to service problems. china at times like that are interesting. german sagas are famous my peers. dont ask.
    i would like to be able to hand off all that stuff but its not in the cards, i am a lousy passenger and a bad observer. i am a take a stand kind of person who teaches my kids the alpha /anti alpha behavior, they not only learn how to do it, they learn how not to do it. my gift.

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    1. tim, your frantic speed is astonishing, to say the least. Don’t know how you do it. So glad I don’t have to keep up with you. The activity that you apparently thrive on would have done me in a long time ago.

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  25. I don’t think this is OT, but Dale has posted a new blog that somehow hasn’t made it to this site.
    Has anyone else been notified of it? I can read by clicking on a link in my email account, but don’t know how to get it here.

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    1. I received an email. It’s called “Today in Sports Names”. I can read it in my email but the link doesn’t work. The other day, I didn’t receive the daily email but found the post by clicking on the previous day’s.

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    2. thanks
      a fun one.
      dale has a one in a million mind.
      laddy dah

      interestingly if you try to read responses or to leave a coment, the website says it cant be found. some snafu in internet land.
      another lesson form the master on how to turn usless information into a question to ponder for the day.
      thanks for the heads up pj

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