Girl learns life lesson
<p>SHAWN GUST/Press Kaytlyn Harris, 10, takes a break from washing a 4-H peer's pig Thursday while preparing the swine for showing at the Kootenai County Fair and Rodeo. Harris' own pig was injured, and subsequently butchered, after falling out of a pickup en route to the fair.</p>
She never got a chance to say, "That'll do."
That's because Borah Elementary student and 4-H participant Kaytlyn Harris' hopes were dashed this week, before she could display the results of her summer toiling at raising a pig.
But 4-H is about life lessons, her mother, Carla, noted.
And letdowns are surely a part of life.
"I told her, 'Everything happens for a reason, even though we don't know what the reason is,'" the Coeur d'Alene mother said on Wednesday.
Kaytlyn knew the whole routine for raising an animal for auction, with two years of prior experience.
The 10-year-old procured her pig, Thunder, in April, set up comfy digs for it at a friend's farm, and tended to it day in and day out.
She cleaned the pen. Fed the swine, watered it.
Over the ensuing few months, the squealer swelled from 50 to 300 pounds.
"She was excited. It was the first year she did it all by herself," her mother said, adding that family helped out in the past.
The big day came on Tuesday.
Kaytlyn waited at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds for her father to arrive with Thunder, so she could show the animal and earn a fair price for it.
Her father, Tom, picked up the pig from the farm, and rolled onto the highway.
But during the trip, the wily creature wrangled the tarp off the bed of the truck.
As the cement world flew by below, it leaped out.
Friends driving close behind stopped to help, but it was too late.
Thunder had broken a leg.
And a mangled animal can't be shown at the fair.
"She wasn't able to enter it," her mother said.
Or keep it. It was straight to the butcher's for the suffering grunter.
"She was devastated," Carla said. "Her exact words were, 'Mom, I worked so hard, all summer long.'"
Mom tried to soften the blow.
"'He's in pig heaven now.' That's all I could say," Carla said. "We both cried all day."
But even sad pig stories can have happy endings. Though not so much for the porker itself, in this case.
A friend has offered to purchase the meat, and Kaytlyn arranged to show a cousin's hog, so she still gets credit for her project.
Kaytlyn and her family will attend the fair all week, Carla added.
"She's just trying to make the best attitude," Carla said.
And the girl did, indeed, learn a lesson ... At least about her 4-H strategy.
Raise rabbits.
"We figure they can jump better," Carla said.