Tom texted me a photo of him and his son next to a dead wild boar. It was big and black with blood coming out of its mouth. Tom and his son were standing stoically with assault rifles across their chests. Under the photo he wrote, “Do you have a hanging scale?”
I replied, “Yes”.
Tom asked if he could bring the pig by and weigh it. “I think it weighs over 350” he wrote. I told him it was too late because it was. It was 11pm and I was already in bed. I told him to come by tomorrow morning and I’d help him out.
Tom showed up with the boar, his wife and his dog at 10:30am. He tied a rope around its legs and we dragged it to the edge of the tailgate and it hit the ground with a solid thud. Its mouth popped open and the long yellow tusks showed for the first time. Tom tied a tow strap around the back of the boar’s legs and then looped the strap through an iron ring on the 2×6 frame of my shop’s awning. Then he tied the end of the strap to the ball hitch of his truck. I wasn’t sure the board would hold and I envisioned the whole damn awning crashing down on top of me. I stepped back as he pulled forward in his truck. Up the boar went while the board creaked and held.
Tom looped the hanging scale chain through the tendon in the back legs of the boar and slowly backed the truck up. The boar lowered onto the weight of the scale. We both looked at the scale showing 242 pounds. Tom was very disappointed, “Damn, I thought it weighed more than that.”
Now we had to get the boar back into the truck bed. The problem was that we had the boar hanging up with the weight of the truck. If we moved the truck backwards the boar would drop to the ground. We had to figure out a way to keep the boar hanging while we moved the truck back underneath the boar. Tom tied another strap to the boars legs, ran it through the iron loop and said, “Here you hold it.”
“Tom, I weigh 185 pounds. I can’t hold up a 240 pound boar while you back the truck up.”
“Just run it around that post,” he said.
I put my gloves on and ran it around the post while Tom started backing the truck up. It was at this point that I started thinking, “How do I get myself into these positions? Why am I out here in the cold weather, wearing gloves, a tow strap wrapped around the post of my awning, holding up a 240 pound dead boar so Tom can weight it?”. I just don’t know. I really don’t.
As Tom backed up the weight of the boar started pulling the strap out of my hands and I could feel it slipping so I wrapped the loose end of the strap around my waist and used my weight to lean backwards. The tension of the strap started to crush my right hand as I had it wrapped around that hand as well for extra grip. Right when I was about start yelling for Tom to stop because my hand was being crushed he yelled out, “Drop it!”
I let go of the strap and the boar hit the back of truck bed with a great heave as though a tractor had just dumped a bunch of mulch or gravel into the back.
The hanging scale went flying off the hook and crashed onto the rocks and broke the plastic cover apart.
Tom looked at the scale and then looked at me. I was trying to take off my gloves to see how bad my hand was injured.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Tom said.
“Ok,” I said.