"Ooh my arm...

...I think it's broken!" Anyone who's ever seen "Caddyshack," surely recognizes those words as the handy work of Rodney Dangerfield as "Al Czervik." Getting thrashed by Judge Smails and Dr. Beeper in their $40,000 golf game, Rodney tries to parlay a benign tap on his arm by a golf ball into a full-blown fracture, to try and welch out of the bet. Thinking on his feet, he frantically starts waving his arm all around to "prove" that it's broken.

Why this cinematic trip down memory lane? Because this week, young Orville has been doing his best Czervik around the house. O's hooves have been getting long, so we've set out on the WEEKS long process of trimming them. You can literally only do one snip at a time. So the other day, Bubba takes her first stab at hoof #1, the front left hoof. She's able to get a section maybe just short of a centimeter. Seemed fine enough, until a minute later, we see blood coming out. Upon closer inspection, we've found that despite appearances, the actual flesh of the hoof goes WELL into the nail, right up to the edge.

We spent a good hour trying to clean him, and bandage him up. I don't know if you know this, but it's deceptively hard to keep a pig still long enough for a cut to clot. Food is the key to pretty much everything, so, while Orville remained completely unflustered, he nonetheless was treated to a bonzanza of snacks, while we tried to keep him immobile. We'd stuff his mouth full of tomato while we tried to clean and bandage his hoof.

Well, Orville's no fool. He managed to put 2 and 2 together in his pig mind overnight. Come the next day, we wake up and Orville's gimping around like he's been shot. Just like Rodney. "Ooh my hoof! I think it's broken!" Just to be an even better showman, he threw in this wrinkle. Bubba recently taught him to shake hands. It's really precious actually. He'll raise his front left hoof (the one we happened to hurt), and hold it as long as possible. So now, to play up the pity, (because pity = snacks), Orville has been gimping across the room, and "desperately" raising his hoof as an offering of gratitude towards his saviors. He does it with the desperation of Willem Dafoe in "Platoon," having just been shot by his own men, and being left for dead. We load him up with 'mato's or carrots for our baby boy. He gets his grub on, then skips back to his bed or the couch in full stride. Then, his gimp "miraculously" appears about 30 minutes later, when he's hungry again. Genius.