The Pig War

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a pig, once. A rifle bolt. A long silence.)
San Juan Island, eighteen fifty-nine. It starts with a potato patch.

[Verse 1]
An American farmer named Cutlar finds a pig in his potatoes.
The pig belongs to an Irishman working for the Hudson's Bay Company.
The pig has been in the potatoes before. Cutlar shoots the pig.
He offers ten dollars. The Company asks for a hundred.
He says — and this is the recorded quote — "it was eating my potatoes."
And the Irishman says, "it is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig."

[Chorus]
And that's it. That's the whole cause. One pig, in a garden.
Within weeks there are four hundred and sixty-one American soldiers
and five British warships with two thousand men and seventy guns
in a standoff over an island, over a pig, over a potato.
The Pig War. Thirteen years. Not one shot fired after the pig.
The pig remains the only casualty of the entire war.

[Verse 2]
The British admiral refused to escalate — he said, in as many words,
that he would not involve two great nations in a war over a squabble
about a pig, which is the single most sensible sentence
spoken by anyone in this entire account, and he was correct,
and both sides settled into a joint military occupation
and, having nothing else to do, began visiting each other for dinner.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Thirteen years of two garrisons on one small island
holding athletic competitions and drinking each other's whisky
while diplomats in Europe worked out where the border went,
and it was eventually arbitrated by the Emperor of Germany,
who had no connection to any of it, and who ruled for the Americans,
and the British marched down to the boats and everybody went home.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the pig again, unbothered)
One pig.
Thirteen years. One pig.