Atta Pig, Babe

My house has turned into a fucking barnyard circus.

It started with the chickens. They eat anything that you leave outside (crumbs, spilled rice, coconut shavings that I was planning on using to cook with, but left outside because I don’t have enough counter space inside, etc), they have repeatedly stomped on and ripped up my pot of basil and cilantro seedlings (although the neighbor children helped with that), and they leave chicken diarrhea right in my path, fresh for the stepping.
But ok, tudo bem, chickens exist and they are in my yard. This is nothing new. Chickens roam freely basically everywhere in Mozambique, well, except the beach. However, these particular chickens have now grown some balls and started pecking their way into my house. At first a simple “shoo” scared them out, but now I find myself wildly running in circles around my house and crawling under my bed chasing the chickens, all the while whapping at the floor and waving after them with a monster stick as if I was a goaded granny threatening to take her cane to the behinds of her unruly grandchildren.

No, chickens don’t a barnyard make. But there is also the girl that poops in the yard. She has upped the anty and drops a daily deuce not too far from my doorstep. I suppose she isn’t an actual barnyard animal, but she loves to play fetch and it would appear that her mother is raising her as if she was one… or just trying to cultivate some human manure.

But worst of all, on top of the chicken situation and the poor hygiene situation, a family of porkers has invaded my previously rather tame yard.

I feel like I am living in Babe 2: The Barnyard Visits Mozambique. I mean, the little girl’s little poos don’t got nothin’ on the smell of the big, black, snorting, rolling, waddling, piglets and big piggy mamas that have dug a hole under my fence and taken control of my trash pit as if they were Somali pirates invading a treasure ship.
I liked the movie Babe. In fact, I loved it. My friend Winona and I would watch it over and over again until both of our parents started hiding the film to keep it out of our sights, out of our minds and out of their VHS players. We also obsessively watched the sandlot and took turns kissing the TV screen and the VHS box because we were so in love with Benny. I suppose we were passionate about our film choices.
But now I realize that the big screen images of pigs are practically as romanticized as that of the skinny, mini, big boobed, aryan, sex-bomb, leading ladies. Take for example Babe or Wilbur, these protagonist pigs are little, pink, clean, adorable, have curly little tails and they talk in cute little snorty voices.
Well, real pigs in Mozambique, much like real women in America, do not fit such a fine and fancy stereotype. No, they, the Mozambican pigs that is, are big and black with wiry hair and short tempers. And they smell like poo that has been rotting in the 100 degree super humid heat.

But above all, they seem to be rather feisty and territorial and have zoned off the trash pit as a NO HUMAN ENTRY zone. Who do they think they are? I was here first. And I have garbage in need of dumping. Nope, the pit is a strictly pig eating, pooping, and rolling in sand and waste zone, and should any human try to enter, they angrily grunt like a rhino and prepare to charge.

We should just get it over with and kill them so I can resume tossing trash in peace.

Now serving pork with a side of grilled chicken.