Piggies and kittens

KINGSTON, Iowa (AP) -- Luck ran out for about a dozen pigs who escaped their flooded farm, swam through raging floodwaters and scrambled atop a sandbag levee in southeastern Iowa.

Officials said they killed the pigs over worries that they would weaken the levee.

Des Moines County sheriff's officials shot the pigs Tuesday, not long after they reached the levee several miles from the nearest hog farm.

Officials said they killed the pigs over worries that they would weaken the levee. Onlookers said the animals were having a difficult time trying to maneuver their way off the sandbags, and that they scurried back into the water as people approached.

"Basically you cannot have something with a hoof walk on plastic and not poke a hole in the plastic and let water into it," said LeRoy Lippert, chairman of the county emergency management commission. "Hogs, they have a tendency to root and that would not have been good either."

He said the state veterinarian and other agencies were consulted, and that 10 to 16 animals were killed

"It happens every day. My gosh, that's what slaughterhouses do -- that's how we get bacon and pork chops," Lippert said. "It's just one of the casualties of the flooding situation."

The carcasses were left at the site and treated essentially as road kill, Lippert said. "You don't get them out of the mud and over the dike when you're worried about people and people's property," he said.

Louisa County Sheriff Curt Braby said he had heard about the incident and understood why the pigs needed to be killed.

"They did not want to take a chance on losing a city due to a few hogs," he said.

This just makes me so sad :( I understand why and that it was right thing to do. I'm too soft hearted. Which is why we never got any cows to raise. I knew I couldn't send them to the butcher. Hubby teased me that I would give them names, baby them and set up individual stalls with their names on them lol You know, he's probably right!

It's also the reason we have so many cats on the farm. We have 3 Momma cats outside right now. 1 had 6 kittens, and 2 of them have 2 kittens each, I think, not sure I've seen all the babies yet. Along with 2 males from an earlier litter. This morning, one of the Mommas had 2 babies (maybe 4-5 weeks old) under my car. So, here I am at 7:15, in my dress clothes, kneeling in the driveway and coaxing them out from under the car. 2 of the Mommas are skittish (half wild) so don't know how many kitties each of them had for sure. The ones under my car were a black male and a tiger female. Don't know if they belong to the black Momma or the tiger Momma. Both Mommas kept checking under car but wouldn't go to the kitties when I put them down. Finally, I just put them in the wood shed with the 6 from original Momma and figure their Momma will find them, I hope. So, now I will worry all day about them and if their ok....sigh. I suppose to many people I'm silly but like I said....soft hearted, that's me!

Will meet hubby at home after work to go shopping for a new dryer and get some supper. Have no clue what to do with the old one but it's close to being an antique lol...just kidding! We looked at the papers from old set and we bought them in 1991!! Sure doesn't seem that long ago...time flies...

This Day in History:

June 19, 1885

Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor

On this day in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor as a symbol of Franco-American friendship.

Nine years late, the 300-foot statue was a gift from the people of France, who had been the Patriots’ primary foreign ally in the War for Independence, to those of United States as a celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s centenary in 1876. The monumental work is mounted on a steel framework designed by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue, originally titled “Liberty Enlightening the World” from copper sheets upon a steel frame. After completion, the statue was disassembled into 350 sections and shipped in 214 crates to New York Harbor. Over a year later, on October 28, 1886, the statue was reconstructed and dedicated in a large public ceremony by President Grover Cleveland.

The statue’s pedestal bears the words of poet Emma Lazarus, written in 1883:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

These words echoed those of the radical Patriot pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, written in his 1776 call to arms, Common Sense:

“This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster….”

When the Ellis Island immigration center opened its doors on an island in New York Harbor near the Statue of Liberty in 1892, Lazarus’ words welcomed the 12 million immigrants who passed by “Lady Liberty” after trying trans-Atlantic journeys on their way to becoming Americans.

June 19, 1945

"Who's on First"

On this day in 1945, Abbott and Costello's classic comedy routine "Who's on First?" is seen in the film The Naughty Nineties. The duo had already made the routine famous in live performances and on the radio, and a shorter version had been seen in the 1940 film One Night in the Tropics.

June 19, 1949

NASCAR stages first Grand National

NASCAR staged its first Grand National event at the Charlotte Fairgrounds; the event marked the birth of NASCAR racing as we know it today. In 1946, race promoter Bill France began promoting an event in Charlotte. As he explains it, "I wanted to run a 100-mile national championship race at the fairgrounds, but [local sports editor] Wilton Garrison said I couldn't call it a national championship race." Garrison argued that France "might call it a North Carolina championship race, but you have to get some kind of a national organization to sanction it in order to call it a national championship race." So began Bill France's dream of creating a national sanctioning body for stock-car racing, which would govern a points standing as well as organize races in states across the country. During the 1946 stock-car season, France formed the National Championship Stock-Car Circuit. France withheld a purse for the point fund, kept track of standings, attempted to enforce uniform rules, and paid the drivers on time. That year, France expanded stock-car racing's range, arranging races all over the South. The 1947 season began with a 160-mile race at Daytona Beach. By the middle of the season, France had incorporated more than a dozen tracks into his circuit; he offered a guaranteed purse of $2,000 at each event; and he had a slogan, "Where the fastest that run, run the fastest." But at that point most of the race cars were modified stock pre-war Fords, and France and his governing body had a nearly impossible time enforcing regulations placed on modification of the car engines. The combination of his success with the NCSCC and his failure to enforce strict rules led him to call a meeting in December of 1947 at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona to discuss a more substantial governing body for stock-car racing. What emerged from the meetings was the National Association for Stock-Car Auto Racing, or NASCAR. The 1948 season was a more tightly governed version of the previous year; the sport's final breakthrough came in 1949. France decided that product identification would greatly add to fan interest in stock-car racing. As all of the major car companies had released postwar models, France created rules in the off-season that would allow for a Grand National division of NASCAR racing. Only late-model, strictly stock cars would be allowed in the Grand National class. A crowd of 13,000 watched as Jim Roper won the inaugural event on the three-quarter-mile dirt track at the Charlotte Fairgrounds. The Grand Nationals later became Winston Cup Series events. Which became Nextel Cup, which became Sprint Cup...

Ok, I have to get some work done...take care....until tomorrow.