pig typhoid A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt -- A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt. When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig, Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, You'll never go wrong with a pig! - GR 000112 ... me Because of a pig ... an island was lost, or nearly. Our intrepid sojourner heads to the last American frontier to steep himself in the annals of a lesser-known U.S.-British conflict OF ALL THE MAJOR and minor wars, border clashes, peacekeeping interventions, long-range remote bombing missions, frontier skirmishes, commando actions, temporary clandestine invasions, and other military enterprises that the United States of America has embarked on during its bellicose 200-year history, probably none is less likely ever to be the subject of a major motion picture than the one that began, on June 15, 1859, with the untimely death of a pig. Although no potentially eye-moistening historical episode can now be considered safe from the attentions of Steven Spielberg, it seems fair to assume that the Pig War ranks somewhere far below the 1983 invasion of Granada on his list of future projects. One must even admit, regretfully that it would not provide much material for Ken Burns. If you have never heard of the Pig War, there is no need to feel inadequate. All it means is that you probably do not live within zip code 98250, the postal address of Washington State's San Juan Island, a small tourism, farming, and whale-watching community. Peaceable though it now seems, San Juan Island was, more than a century ago, the staging ground for a military contest between two mighty nations. The pig's moment in history's limelight was a brief one. We know nothing of its biography prior to that fateful June morning, when it tunneled under a fence into a potato patch, began rooting up and eating the tender young tubers, and very shortly thereafter was shot dead by the man who had planted them. The pig, a large black boar, belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company (which had set up a farm on the island), and was therefore British. The pig-killing farmer had recently arrived from Kentucky, and was therefore American. This added up to an international incident when both the farmer and the Hudson's Bay Company started complaining to their respective governments, which drew new attention to the fact that each government, due to certain geographical irregularities, considered itself rightful proprietor of the island. Next thing, troops started landing. First, a company of the Ninth U.S. Infantry, commanded by a young officer named George E. Pickett (who would later win fame at Gettysburg), showed up to assert America's manifest destiny on the beaches of San Juan. A few days later, three Royal Navy warships arrived, ready to defend the rights and immunities of all British citizens and their livestock. But the crisis passed almost as quickly as it had begun. Within a few months, levelheaded officials assessed the situation and agreed to a joint military occupation until the two governments could figure out which of them was the island's rightful proprietor. So the American troops hunkered down on the south shore of San Juan, and a small detachment of red-coated marines set up camp 16 miles away, on the north shore. Before long, the two garrisons more or less threw down their rifles and settled into a friendly round of picnics, track-and-field matches, and potluck dinners. This is how they whiled away the next 13 years. The U.S. government was preoccupied with the rather more urgent matter of civil war; the British Empire, too, had other fish to fry. It was not until 1872 that the contenders got around to settling the San Juan question. Then one day word arrived that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany--who had for some reason been asked to arbitrate--had decreed that San Juan was American soil. The British lowered the Union Jack and sailed away A farmer named William Crook bought their campsite and planted fruit trees on the old parade ground, and turned the old barrack buildings into storage sheds. The U.S. Army left a couple years later, and the Pig War was over. It had not been a particularly bloody conflict, unless you were the Hudson's Bay Company's pig. For that fortunate animal, the war had meant a brief, glorious sortie across enemy lines, a daring raid, a flash of light, and then a kind of immortality. WHEN YOU ARRIVE ON SAN JUAN Island today, at the ferry landing in the too-cutely-named town of Friday Harbor, where throngs of vacationers amble among the clam shacks, it is hard to imagine that just a few generations ago this place lay at the utmost frontier of the civilized world. It is equally hard to imagine that anyone thought this place was worth fighting a war over. Then you head farther on, toward the less settled part of the island, and it is easy to imagine both. Early one morning, I hiked along the bluffs not far from where the Ninth Infantry once camped, through rain-soaked alpine meadows above lonely coves. At one point, I saw up ahead of me an old white-haired man standing on a promontory, hunched against the wind in a brown parka. As I approached him, he turned his head, ruffled his wings, and I saw that he was a bald eagle. The place then seemed worth any number of pigs, or soldiers. Before leaving Washington, D.C., for Washington State, I'd spent some time at the Library of Congress to see what books I could find on the Pig War. One of them, The Pig War: And Other Experiences of William Peck, Soldier 1858-1862, offered a look at the journal of an American participant in the great conflict. Unfortunately, it turned out to consist largely of entries such as: "Camp Pickett, November 18th. Weather as usual, dull. Detachment doing nothing. These are really halcyon days of our soldiering, utterly idle." Once I arrived on San Juan, the first thing I did was to head out to the site of the old English camp, now part of a national park. On a sheltered inlet hemmed in by Douglas firs, a few whitewashed frame buildings still stand by the parade ground. Down on the eroding beach, among the rocks and shells, I found pieces of old whiskey bottles, bits of clay pipestem, and even an old brass button, gone green with age, that bore the globe insignia of the Royal Marines. Later that day, on my way into Friday Harbor, I saw a sign that said "Pig War Museum." When I stopped by to investigate, I was greeted by Emilia L. Bave, who for the last 40 years has been San Juan Island's self-appointed curator of Pig War history. No doubt, I thought, she is just a nice local historical-society lady of advanced years, who will sit me down with a cup of tea and make pleasant chitchat about the olden days. The first clue I got that this would not be the case was when she jabbed her forefinger toward a placard on the lobby wall. "House rules," it read. "No smoking. No drinking. No drugs. No fighting. No obscenities. No lewd behavior." She locked the door behind us (I noted with some trepidation) and showed me to a vast, malodorous armchair. She seated herself at the opposite end of the room, and for the next hour proceeded to tell me about everything except the Pig War. I heard about her career in the Coast Guard, her late husband Milt, and how a defective box of Great Western Toasted Oats had given her a case of internal shingles. At last I leapt up and told her I didn't want to run out of time to see the museum properly. Mrs. Bave rose, opened a door behind me, and began flip ping light switches. The vast, sunless room was lined with cases of shop-window dummies dressed in historical garb, enacting episodes from the island's history. "I got them from Miller's department store," Mrs. Bave said. "I couldn't get enough male ones, so a lot of these are women." This was indeed true. In addition to his luxuriant beard, the early Spanish explorer Francisco Eliza had a pert nose and dimples, and part of his conquistador attire consisted of a baby-blue-and-white cotton dress, circa 1965. In another display case, George Pickett wore what looked suspiciously like a Coast Guard uniform. My guide soon retired to her armchair for a nap, and I continued on alone. The exhibits, as I progressed, grew stranger and stranger. One, which depicted a certain Charles McKay, an ex-miner who lived on San Juan during the Pig War, bore a placard that read: "His granddaughter, Aurelia Gagner, remembered when he was eighty years old that his teeth were still strong enough to shell walnuts. How he loved to play chess!" Finally, I came to an entire wall devoted to the Crook family, who had farmed where the English camp once stood, until William's last superannuated children transferred the land to the National Park Service in the 1960s. There was James Crook, who "lost his eye from a flying knot while chopping wood"; his sister Mary, who "was a perky little woman and very religious"; and sister Rhoda, who "wore her shirt collar up to try to hide huge goiters." This last dummy was particularly unsettling in appearance. Apparently, the mannequins at Miller's department store had all been goiterless, and drastic measures had been taken. Rhoda's life-size likeness, the placard stated proudly, "was created from wall spackle by Emilia L. Bave." Goiters made of wall spackle aren't quite up there with the Iwo Jima Memorial. Yet I couldn't help but wonder, as I looked over to where Mrs. Bave sat snoring peacefully, whether she hadn't created a suitable monument for a war that was started by a pig. PHOTO (COLOR): Scenes from a skirmish: British marines stand in formation at the English camp (left); U.S. troops pose next to a Napoleon gun (right) 000505 ... Zoe first of all, how can you right that much, me? i just don't understand. anyway... pigs are what everyone in elementry and middle school call that little fat girl who sits in the front row. latter, if they are lucky, they will realize that that same "pig" writes beautiful poetry, and one day, she'll be rich and happy and they will all poor and sad. 000717 ... j_blue he makes me upset. she makes me upset. i make me upste. i eat. i am a pig 001117 ... tourist Thanks for the travelog "me?", being a traveler once myself I enjoy a well described visit to someplace new to me. 001117 ... tazfab carnitas! noone likes carnitas. she's soft and dirty! carnitas is my squishy pig. soft and pink. carnitas loves me. i love carnitas. carnitas! 001117 ... grendel what am i suposed to do? lost my shit because of you. 001117 ... Barrett nothing can stop me now cause I don't care anymore nothing can stop me now cause I just don't care... 001117 ... rollins it was a great moment. we were eating outdoors at this place on santa monica blvd. and this pig came up to us and said that We Faggots had to move. And my friend John said that we weren't Faggots. That we paid for this food, and we were gonna eat it. The pig told us Faggots not to get him mad. John stood up and the pig found out that john was bigger and meaner looking than he thought and john was probably someone you should address as 'SIR.' Anyway, the pig saw that he might get his stupid ass KICKED and backed off in front of about 20 people who started laughing really hard. There was no way the pig could make it look like anything else than what it was. Pigs think they're magic, til they smell shit running down their legs after theve been shot. 001211 ... MeSsIaH japanese people there at chinese resturant eating italian food with mexicans and faggotsraping little children in the nostrils 030729 ... skalix pork... the other white meat. 040201 ... thehelper You can never go wrong with a Pig! That round animal and its spider friend, They just roll through all that shit with a smile, That pig, it's really something, That will do pig, Babe, A source for soul, a source for bacon, You can never go wrong with a Pig! 040511 what's it to you? who go blather from