Pigs and volcanoes

Well, I castrated pigs on my birthday. A pig, anyway. It went smoothly, and I'll post pictures at some point so I can prove it actually happened. It's pretty straightforward as long as you don't think too much about what you're doing.

The sad part was that one of the pigs had a genetic disorder that's pretty rare among pigs that caused his intestines to spill out of where we removed the testicles. There's a ring of ligaments that the spermatic cord passes through that holds everything else in, and in rare cases that ligament is weak, so when you take out the testicles, the pig basically herniates. Usually there's nothing you can do and you have to kill the animal. Dale tried sewing up the incisions, which you usually leave open for drainage, but said that probably it'd just get infected and the pig would have to be put down. So that was pretty bad--it was kind of scary to see the guts just start spilling out like that. Dale, who's worked a ton with animals, said it's only the 3rd time he's seen that happen, so I guess we were just unlucky.


I'm in Riobamba right now, visiting a couple of volunteers here before going to San Lorenzo on Tuesday. I'm excited to see where I'll be living while I'm here. We drove past Tungurahua on our way here, which is an active volcano, and while I couldn't see the mountain itself I definitely saw the smoke column. Apparently it sometimes dumps ash all the way down here.