Organic Baby Farm: Sic Semper Sus

A number of people (2 is a number, right?) have asked me to post pictures of the construction of the Papier-Mache Pig Head On A Pike that I've made for tomorrow's Tea Party protest. Ask and ye shall receive!

Why, you may ask, did I want a papier-mache bloody pig head on a pike? Well, besides the fact that Glenn Reynolds complained that there weren't enough giant papier-mache puppets at Tea Party protests, I want to send Congress a message at the protest that we'll be coming for them if they pig out on our money, only not in a violent way. So I didn't want to put any particular person's head on a pike, because that would be a violent threat and that's not the message I wanted to send. That's why I chose a pig head. And if the pig head was on a pike but wasn't bloody, it might be mistaken for a delicious barbecued treat or might be thought to be cute. Also, a bloody pig head is a good way to get young boys like my sons interested in protests. Nothing attracts the attention of boys like a bloody pig head on a pike, except possibly a bloody pig head in a catapult.

The kids had a lot of fun making the pig head. They loved the slime and mess from papier-mache and now they really want to make our next pinata. Maybe we could make a pig pinata for the next protest, but we'd have to clear that with the protest organizers.

First, I made a pig head frame out of chicken wire. (I forgot to take pictures of that stage, but I basically made a cylinder, then made slits into each end of the cylinder and overlapped the resulting tabs to form the back of the head and, at the other end, the snout and mouth.)

Then we covered the chicken wire frame with papier-mache and let it dry overnight. The pictures begin the next morning, when we taped the ears on. The ears are just cups from an egg carton.

Here is the pig with its ears on.

The

next step was to cover this in another layer of papier-mache, this time in white (made of plain white printer paper):

The white paper makes it easier to paint in one coat. We were kinda short on time. If we'd had more time, we probably would have given it an additional layer of newspaper mache before putting on the white layer.

Next comes a little pink spray paint:

After the pink, we paint on details like eyes and snout with some other colors. And the most important detail of all: the RED. The pig needs a patch of red at the base of the head to signify that it's been cut off; otherwise it just looks disembodied. And of course the pointy stick it's on (taken off an old yard sign leftover from a failed campaign) needs to be red, with drips running down it. To make the drips, you have to elevate one end of the stick and then spray in one spot till the paint runs. There's a cinder block behind the cardboard for that purpose.