Veterinary school textbooks and classrooms present vast amounts of information about nutrition and diseases and the care and handling of all common species. Except for one. Humans. Those books don’t mention the variety of client personalities and lifestyles a vet might blunder across, in the course of an average workweek. Nope, the new grad is dropped off, on Planet Real World, without an instruction manual for working with the most unpredictable species of all, the patient’s owners. It’s strictly O.J.T. but it seems common sense to try not to piss too many people off as you do your job, especially the odder ones in the bunch.
To my mind, it’s a toss-up as to which of the two of us is more relieved as I drive down Bobby Ray’s driveway towards the road. The cherries must have lined up in that old boy’s internal slot windows about the same time as mine. He never calls me back to collect feed samples. The visit to pig holler is off the wall unique, an experience with a fifty million to one shot of ever materializing again, over my career, but please, don’t Crayola me in as disappointed at not hearing from the recluse again. I’m pleased there won’t be a second trip to his holler and am confident most of the week’s allotment of good luck was burnt through on that initial visit.
It’s bad Karma to waste nutritious manufacturing by-products. It’s instant Karma to anger a paranoid redneck, certain to be engaged in illegal activity like, say, operating a moonshine still, hid back in those woods behind that briar patch. The deft, linguistic agility cultivated whilst tap dancing around with an aggravated, eight hundred pound gorilla, without once setting it off by looking it in the eye, is priceless. The smooth people skills developed during this type of encounter are valuable. Their true worth later in life in a variety of business and social situations is not to be underestimated. I’ve always wondered though. Did those drunken pigs wake up the next day with hangovers?