Highway Hog

By Trey Cluck

Well it all started on a cool Sunday morning.  My cousin Clint Oliver, with whom I was staying for the weekend, was awakened by a 7:30 am phone call from a friend named Jim.  Jim called to tell Clint that he had spotted something Clint might be interested in taking a look at.  Well it was obviously worthwhile so Clint slammed down the phone and ran into the living room where I was peacefully sleeping on the couch, and woke me up yelling.  Well, this no doubt disturbed my peaceful rest so I rolled over and said "what the hell are you doing?".  Clint simply answered "get your big #@% up, we gotta go catch a hog".  I answered this obvious cry for a frontal lobotomy with a simple "what??!!", as Clint ran out the back door in his fruit of the looms and grabbed Misty (a full grown Catahoula Cur) out of the pen and put her in the back of the truck.  

By this time I was fully awake and just as riled up about the hog as he was.  So Clint dresses himself and jumps in the truck.  I lit up a cigarette and finally asked the question on everybody at Clint's house mind.  "Where the hell are we going?" I asked.  Clint's simple response was "catch a boar hog son".  "Okay, where?"  Hwy 365 in Nederland, TX, where we were at that particular moment, that I will never forget in my entire life.  So we're haulin' @#$ down 365 looking for a boar hog on the side of the road.  Well, we see Jim standing in the bed of his truck on the shoulder of the road flagging us down and pointing at the ditch.  We both looked at the same time and there he was.  I guess he weighed about 200 lbs.  So we pull over, jump out of the truck and turn Misty loose on the beast.  He didn't look too bad so we walked up to him and tried to grab his back legs to roll him over and tie him up.  Well, I had raised show hogs for FFA 5 yrs. in a row so I thought, no problem.  Boy, was I wrong.   He must have drug me 20 feet before I got back up.  He tossed Misty, a well known bay dog, all over the place and this was just the beginning. 

Jim, who only spotted the hog because he was on his way home from the hardware store buying parts for his hot water heater, had to get home and replace the parts so his wife could take a shower.  Well, to make a long story short the hog almost got away.  The cops came and told us we were crazy, the same statement made by my girlfriend, Clint's wife, and 80% of the Nederland community.   The hog is still a member of the Nederland community, but not a problem to the public works department anymore but a problem to my cousin and I in our baypen.

Trey Cluck

Nederland, Texas