Animal Farm

It's been quite the year. As we whack-a-mole our way from one shocker-oo to another, it's just about impossible to sustain more than a 30-second focus on any one outrage, fear factor, surprise, craziness. Whatever it is, there's another one around the corner. 

That said, it's almost a relief when one of the 30-second whatevers is something other than Trump, the pandemic, another black man shot by the police...

Murder hornets? A pleasant interlude! The pre-election asteroid? Hey, cool! 

And now I've got the wild hog sitch to grab my nano-attention. Bring it!

There are about nine million feral hogs in the U.S. And those numbers are ballooning and increasing the estimated $2.5 billion in damage they already cost in the U.S. each year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.

That’s according to Dale Nolte, manager of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program at the Department of Agriculture, who tells The Atlantic that the increasing numbers of feral hogs in the U.S. is sometimes referred to as a “feral swine bomb.” (Source: WSAV)

"Feral swine bomb"? You don't say. How great would it be if they showed up for one of the Trump rallies? They might be interested to learn that America is going to put an astronaut on Nars, wherever that is. Any of them recalling their pre-wild days might wince, but be amused, by Trump's speculation projection that Joe Biden is getting booster shots in the ass to help him perform better. Those descended from domestic hogs that made a derring-do escape from the slurry-filled pig farm might like being told - as POTUS happily congratulated his all-white crowd of followers in Minnesota - that they have very good genes. 

And some of those feral hog genes may be every bit as fine, in their own way, as those of the cheering Magasotans. Nolte says that the hogs that are a hybrid between domestic hogs and wild boars with European roots are what Dale Nolte is calling "super pigs."

According to Nolte, they’re highly intelligent, have very good senses of smell and have physical attributes, like heavy fur, which increase their ability to survive in the wild. This is what they inherit from boars.

Equally problematic is the qualities they get from domestic pigs, which have been bred to be fertile at all times and to have large litters, more than 10 piglets in each litter, on average.

Plus those super pigs can grow to be 500 pounds and 3 feet tall. And they can power along at a speed of 30 m.p.h. And as they scoot along their merry way, they destroy everything in their path. They especially go for "sugar cane, corn, wheat, oats, rice and peanuts." (Same!) They like fruit, too. (Same!) They also like to chunk around on golf courses, snouting up big divots. (Not same!)

And they're kind of our own home grown version of the pangolin, transmitting all sorts of viruses, bacterial diseases, and parasites. 

Oh, yes, and they've been known to attack humans. In Texas, where a lot of the feral hogs hang out, they even killed a woman in her own front yard.

Fortunately, there are no feral hogs reported in Massachusetts. But they have been working their way north and east, and they've been spotted in NH and VT.

This winter's promising to be both scary (civil war, anyone?) and depressing (masks, everyone?). The last thing I want to see when I walk out my front door is a rampaging feral hog channeling its inner pangolin. 

Or are they more like the revolutionary pigs in Animal Farm?

In either case, what a year!