Clark, if that cat had nine lives he just used them all.....

I use a lot of references on this blog from Christmas Vacation.  Sorry - but humor me again.  Picture the scene where the cat chews on the Christmas tree lights.....now replace that scene with pigs instead of a cat.  Yup, that would be our life a week ago.

About 12:30 last Tuesday morning (the time of the last big snow) our smoke alarm started going off.  I jumped out of bed and headed to the hallway to check on the kids.  I knew immediately the smoke had something to do with the pigs in the garage.  Jay, who is a heavy sleeper, takes a little more time to get his bearings.  He made it into the hall and was trying to jump up and wave the smoke away from the detector.  I yelled at him to get to the garage.  About the time he hit the garage door Cade ran out of his room to hear Jay yell "Oh my gosh".  Cade screamed "the pigs."  I ran to the door and looked at Jay and Cade in the garage.  The smoke was so thick I couldn't see anything and I could see the electrical cords sparking and on fire.  For a few minutes I was sure the pigs were dead and we were going to loose the house.  I asked Jay if we needed to call the fire department.  He told me to wait a minute.  I didn't know what to do with myself.  I unlocked the front door in case I had to grab Camryn and make a getaway and I opened up some kitchen windows.  I also waved the smoke from the smoke detector and got that to quit going off. 

I checked on them again in the garage and Jay had the fire out.  It was a miracle, all the pigs were unhurt and the damage was just to their pen.  I was fully expecting to loose the garage.  Apparently they got a little wild and pulled down their heat lamp, which set the wood shavings on fire.  Jay figured it had probably been burning 10-15 minutes before the smoke alarm went off.  I'm still not sure how they survived all of the smoke that was in the garage.  They ended up back in the pack-n-play in our laundry room for the rest of the night.  Jay pulled out the burnt shavings and put the mangled smoking heat lamps in the dumpster and moved it several feet from the house.  I was up the rest of the night afraid something else would spark in the garage.  Jay spent his 1st snow day buying heat lamps, reconstructing their pen in the garage, and wiring up a more secure heat source for these pigs.

I've said for a while the lack of sleep the pigs caused at the beginning almost killed me.  Well, the pigs quitle literally almost killed us that night.  Thank goodness for a good smoke detector and the fact that being a mother has taught me to sleep like a cat.  Later that next night Cade asked if this was something we'd laugh about later?   Terry called us the Griswolds of the livestock world. 

But just to recap so you won't forget what these pigs have been though....
their mother stepped on two of them.  They were stitched up.  One fell off our kitchen counter the first night when we were doctoring it.  That is also the same one that got bandaged with an old burp rag and orange masking tape because I had no medical supplies.  Now they survived a fire.  There were flames in their wood chips by the time we found them.  You know in the last post when I said I thought we had about $1,000,000 invested in these pigs give or take?  Yeah, we quite seriously almost lost our house over the deal.  I know there must be a special place in heaven for wives who's husbands never give up....because using a ladder to hold up the heat lamps is 1,000x more safer than the broom and tricylce they were attached to.