It’s · not · the · fall · that · kills · you, · but · the · sudden · stop.

How did I spend this American holiday that celebrates a race of people invading another country and slaughtering the previous tenants (only to say 'sorry' a few hundred years later by giving them land in arid areas, tax-free cigarettes and casinos)?

Why, I went to visit my old friend Dr. K. in Mississippi for a bit of slaughter myself!

Meet "Wiggly". He is about to die. Dr. K. invited me, The Boyfriend, and my roommate Nathan to his farm outside Hattiesburg to dispatch and butcher this adorable 300 lb. hog.

As I leaned over the fence to take this shot, Dr. K. pulled the trigger, perhaps even the instant before the camera clicked, and I jumped back at the surprise of being 2 feet away from the target of a rifle, which might explain the blurriness of the shot.



Dr. K. gave the rifle to Nathan who ran 200 yards through the muddy field after Wiggly, who was now running amok and screaming with a .22 bullet in his brain. FUN!



When Nathan caught up to Wiggly, we heard another rifle shot ring across the muddy Mississippi tundra. We all ran out after him to find not one but two perfect rifle shots between Wiggly's eyes…

…and still the beast screamed and ran and screamed and ran.

Dr. K. got a hold of his ears and deftly slit his throat, surgeon style. Just like Charity Hospital! I thought.

I've never personally understood the term 'blood-curdling' until that day as Wiggly's screeching mortal squealing pealed across the land for what seemed like hours. Dr. K. quietly held the hog's ears as he bled to death, murmuring, "Just let it go, Wiggly. All done now…" and other soothing things probably lost on the pig. But it was a nice touch to the squeamish city fags (me and The Boyfriend) watching in enrapt horror.



Dr. K. then asked The Boyfriend to grab a leg while he slit open Wiggly's belly, the body still twitching in post-mortem electrical impulses.



The Boyfriend told me that as the intestines began springing out like meaty confetti, he closed his eyes, not wanting to see it.

He saw it later however when I showed him this video: (QuickTime 3.9 MB)

"Ewwwww," quod The Boyfriend.

Ewww, indeed, my dear.

After the jack-in-the-box guts had been removed, Wiggly finally began to resemble something dead.



Nathan claimed the liver proudly.



I dragged the pig back to the butchering station, a chain through his legs behind the split Achilles tendons, pulled behind a golf cart as my slightly-sick-to-the-stomach Boyfriend followed, surrounded by some very excited dogs.



We strung Wiggly up by a hoist and a bar once again through the tendons and began the time-consuming but-not-nearly-as-disgusting-as-you-might-think task of skinning the animal.

I was clinging possessively to my camera thinking, I'll just be the photographer today, m'kuh? Therefore most of the skinning was done by Dr. K., The Boyfriend and Nathan, although I was given a knife as well just to experience the 'magic.'

I've never skinned an animal. I can check that off my list, never to return to it.



Unusable bits were tossed into a wheelbarrow which The Boyfriend and I took to the river later and flung away watching bits of Wiggly float south to the Gulf of Mexico.



The most gruesome part of the day for me, besides the harrowing screams of the dying pig I mean, was watching Nathan saw the animal in half. The grind of the meat saw on the pelvis as it cracked, and the slow progress through all the vertebræ freaked my shit right out. I think it was the sound, really — the texture of the sound.



After a long day of butchering your own pet, it's time to have fun, putting various body parts over inappropriate human parts.

Here is The Boyfriend "giving head." Oh, the laughs we had!



And here I am 'cleverly' holding a giant pig testicle over my hoohoodilly. We're grown-ups, fer shur!



We left Wiggly's skinned carcass to hang outside and cool overnight to 42° or so. The next morning we brought the cleaved piggly-wiggly into the kitchen and spent the day in an assembly line chopping up pork chops, bacon, ham, hamhocks, pork steaks, making sausage, and filling Dr. K.'s freezer with enough Wiggly to last the year.

My job, as the sissiest of all present, was to wrap the cuts and label them with which cut was in which wrapper. I drew many frowny pig faces on the wrappers.



Of course we got some of our own Wiggly bits to take home. Nathan made a Wiggly Chop last night for dinner, for example, and the difference between fresh pork and store-preserved, water-injected pork is palpable indeed.

The experience was useful. I learned a lot about anatomy and my own limits. It's something I'm glad I did, and something I'm glad I'll never have to do again. I don't think I'm going to have nightmares.

(Except maybe about the dying screams and Nathan's sawing… (QuickTime 1.4 MB)