Boar tusk trimming party

We’d just finished our Thanksgiving meal, and we headed out with some of our guests to the top paddock. Kowhai, our pet kunekune boar, was out there wandering happily through the grass.

I felt bad. The poor pig had no idea what he was in for.

“These are hooks to pull calves out of cows,” Naya said as we walked. She was holding up two metal handles with hooks on the end of them. “I’ll attach this special wire to the hooks to make a wire saw. Then I’ll use that to cut off Kowhai’s tusks, pulling back and forth with the handles.”

Naya’s sidekick Jeremy spoke up. “But first we have to snare him.”

Jeremy was wearing thick overalls splattered in mud. He marched forward like a he-man with arms and chest bulging. Anyone could tell this dude was ready to wrestle a pig. He quickly headed off ahead of us.

Subduing the beast

By the time we caught up with him, Jeremy had already immobilized our massive, sharp-tusked, hairy boar. He did not have the pig in a headlock. He did not have him pinned down in a half nelson. He was giving him a belly rub.

All it had taken was a couple of pats from Jeremy, and Kowhai had sprawled out for some love.

“Are you ready, Naya?” Jeremy asked.

“Ready,” she said.

Jeremy sprung into action. He pulled out a rope with a loop tied at one end, and he quickly pushed the loop into Kowhai’s mouth.

Kowhai, unfortunately, also sprung into action. He jumped up and shook his head. Before you could say “What’s Plan B?” he was free of the rope and running across the paddock.

The hayshed

Jeremy sighed. “Let’s get Kowhai into the hayshed and shut the gate. We’ll need food to lure him in.”

“I’ll get some pig nuts,” I said, and I went up to the garage to get them.

When I arrived at the hayshed with the pig nuts, Jeremy already had Kowhai inside with the gate shut. Our friend Steve was in there too. There was tension in the air. An epic battle was about to start.

Half of our hayshed is piled high with random junk CJ has collected – sheets of aluminum, old fence posts, irrigation pipe and weather-beaten planks of wood. (“Treasure,” CJ says. “You’ll never know when we’ll need this stuff.”) The other half of the hayshed holds a quad bike, some metal drums, bins full of chicken feed and – surprise, surprise – a few bales of hay.

Suffice it to say there isn’t a lot of room for pig wrestling.

There were five of us standing in front of the hayshed, ready to watch. Our friend Paul, who is a woodworker, was with us. He’s been learning how to carve bone, and he’d asked for Kowhai’s tusks for practice. CJ and I had agreed he could have them.

“Here we go,” Jeremy said, and he lunged.

It’s difficult to explain what happened next. I kid you not, Jeremy grew a second set of arms. It was like the Thanksgiving Miracle of Martinborough. I expect that in a hundred years people will still be gathering at our hayshed to commemorate the event.

With his first set of arms, Jeremy held Kowhai around the neck. With his second set of arms, he shoved the rope into Kowhai’s mouth. Steve stood on one side of Kowhai and pushed, making sure Kowhai didn’t get away.

As it turns out, having a rope shoved into your mouth while being confined to a small space does not rank highly on a kunekune boar’s list of Fun Things to Do.

Kowhai raged. He let out a horrible wail that sounded like a dying Tauntaun from Star Wars. He swung his head violently. His sharp tusks jutted out one way, then the other. Jeremy and Steve jumped and dodged as the ivory tusks flashed. People and pig began banging into metal drums, knocking against piles of wood, and smashing into the side of the hayshed. Dust rose from the ground. Kowhai continued to wail.

My resolve faltered. Maybe we should stop and sedate Kowhai? But Naya had said sedation wasn’t as safe for the pig as snaring. What if we sedated Kowhai and he never woke up again? No, this was best. Right?

BANG! Kowhai broke free and collided with a plastic bin. But there was Jeremy right behind him, all those arms working. And there was Steve, doing his best to help – even if he was limited by his unfortunate lack of miraculously sprouting extra limbs.

Suddenly Kowhai’s head tipped up, and he became still. Jeremy was gripping one end of the rope above Kowhai’s head. The other end was looped through Kowhai’s mouth and up around his nose. Kowhai was restrained with his mouth wide open.

Naya ran into the hayshed. She got the wire saw around one of Kowhai’s tusks and started pulling back and forth on the handles. A fine powder rose from Kowhai’s mouth as the saw cut through the tusk.

Naya was cutting above the gumline in order to avoid hitting any nerves. She was also careful not to slice Kowhai’s gums. She performed the task quickly and expertly.

There was a strange ‘snap’ noise and Kowhai’s tusk flew to the ground. Naya got the wire saw around the other tusk, and soon that tusk fell to the ground too.

The bone carver

Jeremy released Kowhai and he gave him a good pet. “Sorry, Kowhai,” he said. Then he called out, “Where’s the bone carver?”

Paul stepped forward and picked up Kowhai’s tusks. We all gathered around to look at them.

There is something extraordinary about a boar’s tusk. Looking at those two bits of curved bone in Paul’s hands, I felt something. I think we all felt it – everyone at the hayshed that day. It was something primeval and visceral. It was something, well, sacred.

Paul took a deep breath and held his hand out to CJ. “I can’t take these,” he said. “They’re too special. You guys should have them. You love your pigs.”

“Are you sure?” CJ said.

“Yes.” Paul set them into CJ’s hand. The bones clinked together.

Follow up act

To finish up, we trimmed the tusks on Dougal the Dim-witted Eunuch as well. His tusks were thinner than Kowhai’s, but longer. Even though Dougal is a bit of coward (he’s literally got no balls), he put up a good fight.

When the second round of pig wrestling started up, we noticed a crowd had gathered at the fence. Our neighbor Jim the Mad Welshman was standing there with his son and his son’s friends who’d come out from Wellington for Toast Martinborough, our annual wine festival.

“Come see this ,” CJ said, and the city folks hopped the fence just in time to see Naya sawing aggressively through Dougal’s tusks.

“Rural excitement,” I said to them. “Nothing like a good boar tusk trimming.”

When it was all over I checked on Kowhai and Dougal. Surprisingly, neither seemed traumatized. Instead of running away from the crowd of humans in front of the hayshed, they stayed right with us. All up, the trimming had taken only 5 minutes for each pig — versus hours of recovery from sedation. I gave Kowhai and Dougal each a big helping of pig nuts to reward them, and they gobbled it up immediately.

The neighbors thanked us for the spectacle and hopped back over the fence. Everyone else strolled back to the house. CJ and I each carried a pair of pig tusks. They were like small, consecrated treasures in our hands.

What do you think we should do with the tusks?