Believe me, stuck pigs can SQUEAL - as, indeed, can those who are about to be stuck. When I was a kid I spent a late summer in the Lot area of France on a friend's grandmother's farm, and one night it was decided to slaughter one of the bigger old boars. The pig was put in a halter and walked in darkness from the farm through the streets of the village to the butcher's yard - and as it got closer it obviously twigged what was going to happen. From trotting happily along, as soon as the pig smelled the yard, all four trotters dug into the cobbles and it began to scream horribly; an eerie sound that sets the hairs on the back of your neck on end. What made it even spookier was that the sound was taken up by every other pig in the village in fifty different keys. The screaming continued as the pig was roped around the hind legs and strung up head down on the triangular gallows, and only stopped after the butcher had stuck it through the jugular and wind-pipe (using a German First World War bayonet, and all by the light of kerosene lamps, as I recall). Under the pig was a large pail unto which the blood was run - with the butcher taking care not to let the bucket tip over during the pig's death throes (as it, literally, 'kicked the bucket', and we kids were then given birch twigs to froth up the collected blood to stop it coagulating before it was made into boudins - the local black puddings. As soon as the pig was dead and bled it was cut down and gallons of boiling water poured over it to loosen the bristles, which were then scraped off with a sharpened cart spring before the beast was jointed. It was the most awesomely efficient joint effort, with virtually everyone in the village involved, and the pig converted into joints, offal, suet and what-have-you before dawn; all to the accompaniment of huge amounts of wine, eau de vie, singing, carousing and jollity. It was a scene straight out of Breughel, except that this was just 30 years ago. Very un-PC, of course, but that's what farming used to be like almost everywhere. And the chitterlings and grilled ears were delicious.