You might be a redneck if . . .

I didn't start out all redneck and farm-y, you know. I was born a city girl - albeit a small city. The closest I got to doing all the things I do now is when we would go to visit my mother's family in Thornton on vacation. There, we could pick wild blackberries, watch the corn combines go by and see the menfolk come in all dirty from a long day of farming. We would have fresh corn on the cob that my mother's Uncle Scoop had picked from the sweet corn patch. And that was kind of the extent of it, you know? Vacation would end, and we would go back home to BFE, and I would do regular person things, like purchase produce in the store and things like that.

Then I met The Husband. Little did I know what I was in for.

The Husband grew up milking a cow and killing farm animals for food. He knew that meat didn't just magically appear on that styrofoam plate in the grocery store. Then he went into the Navy and did the whole Desert Storm/Shield thing, got to see the world, etc., etc. When he got out of the Navy, his parents had moved here to BFE to be nearer to his sister and her family as her husband was stationed here. In the Navy. In the desert. Yeah.

Anyway, he came here because they were here, and then they moved away and he was stuck. But then he met me and all was well. We romanced, ran away to get married, and started settling into our lives.

The Husband went to work with The Chicken Man. At that time, however, he was not The Chicken Man. However, he had been arrested at one point for, um, cultivating things that the government has decided that we mere mortals just shouldn't cultivate, you know? But The Husband and Chicken Man became really great friends. Then Chicken Man had a marvelous idea. How about we raise our own chickens, get them all fat and sassy and then kill them and eat them! Ooookay.

Next thing I know, I find myself six months pregnant with Thing One, chasing chickens around a yard, taking them to the guys so that their heads could be cut off, plucking their feathers, gutting them and sticking them in a freezer. The only thing I was missing was being barefoot. You might be a redneck . . .

Eventually, we moved withing "drunken stumbling distance" of The Chicken Man on acreage. There, we got into the rhythm of Chicken Man raising the two-legged creatures on his property and we would raise the four-legged creatures on ours. This included pigs.

Now pigs can be both the cutest and the most disgusting creatures at the same time. They can be all pretty and pink and Babe-like, but then what comes out the rear end of that cute, cuddly beast is the most foul-smelling stuff on the planet. I mean, ew.

We had kept pigs at one of our other houses that we lived at. The guys built a really strong fence out of wooden pallets that nothin but nothin could get escape from. At this new house, however, there was fencing that had been put up probably for a horse at one point in time, but it wasn't completely pig-proof. We figured we'd get little piglets and they would be fine and we would be able to shore up the fencing appropriately before they would get big enough to push their way out of the pen.

So we brought home two cute little piglets, both about the size of a full-grown beagle. We let them loose in the pen, got them some water and some food and stood back and admired. Ahh! Bucolic bliss!

Then it happened. One of the little assholes decided to push the fence. And it came right up. And the little shit slipped out of the pen. Like a greased pig. Doh!

Twenty minutes later, after chasing this little turd all over creation and back again, into the neighbor's yard, all around our yard, through the desert, we finally managed to catch it with the help of Thing One, who was about four at the time. We're exhausted and haul the thing back to the pen. We stick it back in the dog kennel that we had brought the two of them home in so that we can repair the fence and then put it back in.

As we were going to repair the fence, the OTHER piglet makes a break for it on a different part of the fence. Same result as the first time. Fencing goes up, pig goes out. And the chase is on. Again!

This time, the chase wasn't so long. The Husband and I cornered the little bastard in a lean-to for horses. We knew that this was going to be it. We were both too exhausted and were both ready to grab the nearest gun and shoot the damn thing and cook it for dinner that night if we had to. It was NOT going to get away!

The plan was that we would rush it in such a way that either one of us would be able to literally fall on it to capture it. We started inching our way towards it.

You know that whole fight and flight syndrome? Where first the animal shits and then it runs? Well, yeah. The pig did that. And right as it ran, we flung ourselves on top of it.

So there we are, The Husband and I, rolling in pig shit trying to capture all four legs of this squirming creature. Did I mention that we were rolling in pig shit? And did I mention how much it stinks? Yeah. Fragrant!

We subdue the damn beast and then the smell hits us. It appears that the pig didn't just shit and run. It shit while it ran. A whole lot. And it was now all on us. In the clothes, in the hair, rubbed into the skin.

I look a The Husband. He looks deep into my limpid blue eyes. He sees me trying to hold back the involuntary spewing of vomit from the smell.

"Well, it's official," he says. "We're rednecks. We've rolled in pig shit together. This is more binding than marriage."