SCUMU, Labor Day, Apologies

I would like to start by apologizing for my mini-series. Not that is wasn't brilliant or anything, but because I apparently stunted every other blogger on my links. I know my blogs are great and all but you people really need to get on it. Sam stole something, Luke posted about soccer, and Charleston must have been hit by an earthquake because that sector hasn't produced a blog since mid August.

Well Philip and I had quite an adventure with the SCUMU (South Carolina Umu). Philip had some problems securing a pig. Apparently the places he visited Friday and Saturday wouldn't sell him a pig. Who sells pigs but doesn't sell pigs??? Sunday he got a call from a guy on the golf course who said he had some pigs. So Sunday evening we followed this guy down some roads to a "nice" shed type building. Sure enough, dude had some pigs. Philip bought two. Now we had two pigs, what next?

Well we stopped off and got some kerosene (more later). Then we came to the house. Now we had to kill and clean two 40lb pigs. Anybody know how to clean a pig? We did what anyone would do; search youtube and google it. Sure enough, lots of people killing pigs on the internet. Jason called and offered some advice, but he couldn't come over and help considering we almost killed him last weekend. So we were armed with internet knowledge of killing pigs.

First pig. Out of the bag. Squeal Squeal Squeal. Shutup pig. We hold the pig down and Philip takes out the knife and quickly cuts the neck. Excellent, pig should be dead. So we wait for the pig to die. And wait. And eventually we coax the pig to give up the ghost. And by coax I mean I put my foot on its stomach and didn't let it breath. It died. So then Philip strung it up in the garage. Then we realized we needed to get the hair off. He used one of Whitney's old razors. It didn't really work. Pigs are hairy. We then took the dead pig down and laid it on the grass and gave it a kerosene bath. It was the cleanest pig on the block. Then we set it on fire to burn the hair off.

Second pig. I named him Jimmy Carter. So we take Jimmy Carter out of the bag and hold him down. I cut his neck. That doesn't sound right. I like Jimmy C. So Jimmy the pig bleeds for a while. Philip was burning the other pig. About fifteen minutes later Jimmy was still alert and looking around. In fact we played wheelbarrow for a while. But Jimmy Carter was still kicking, but not screaming. Philip decided we didn't get it well enough. Poor Jimmy Carter, he's suffering. So Philip gives it another slice through the neck. He got him good this time. Jimmy tried to squeal, but he couldn't. I decided Jimmy C. had had enough for the night, so I considered his open trachea. I had to squeeze his trachea with my fingers for about a minute in order to kill Jimmy C. I was a little mortified at first. But it was quick.

We cleaned the pigs. This morning Allyson informed me she saw us with the pigs last night. My thoughts were, which part: the part where we killed them, set them on fire, or split open their bellies and drained them of their organs? But I don't think she's traumatized. She enjoyed seeing the pig upside down on the fire. It was neat.

4 am: Then we started our umu fire. Basically you heat up large rocks that will do the cooking. Our wood didn't burn very well. It started to rain. So we covered the fire in the pit and tried covering our firewood. Drat. Mental note: it's hard to start a fire in a rain forest. We attached the pigs to some poles with guitar wire. We didn't have anything else. So we put the pigs on and covered it. We left it and hoped for the best.

7am: Stupid rain forest rain. Our fire was all but out. We now had issues, our pigs weren't cooking. We weren't sure what to do. It was a steady hard rain. We decided to use the charcoal to keep the fire. The coal smoked but didn't really fire after we dumped it in the pit. At that point I decided to go for broke. Up till this point I'd been using and umbrella and trying to stay dry. But not any more. So I went out into the rain to rekindle my fire. And so I fought off nature and it's 3+ inches of rain and got the fire going. The pigs were now getting toasty. The umu was off and the pit BBQ was on. We look Jamaican, we speak Jamaican, we Bobsled Jamaican. It was time to stop the umu and start the Q.

One pig caught fire. Philip decided to hedge his bets and take one pig to the oven.

I spent the next five hours roasting Jimmy Carter over an open flame. Jimmy tasted Gooooooooooooood. Both pigs turned out well and the party went over well. Unfortunately I'd been up since 4 (sort of) and was tired. So I went and slept till 7. And that's why this blog sounds choppy.

Paul "I smell like pig death" Murphy