<p>I was concerned at dinner when my D told me about feral pigs in the Washington suburbs. Both I & her bf assured her that she must have heard it wrong and that it was probably Florida.
But then I thought I would look it up.
[Wild</a> pigs may become Washington?s next big pest - Washington Post](<a href=“http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-11-12/national/35504809_1_wild-pigs-game-and-inland-fisheries-northern-virginia]Wild”>http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-11-12/national/35504809_1_wild-pigs-game-and-inland-fisheries-northern-virginia)</p>
<p>EK, this is one of the strangest thread titles I’ve seen!</p>
<p>I agree VeryHappy, I read it as “federal pigs”, lol!</p>
<p>Okay, no joke…this is pretty disturbing to me. Virginia currently has no plans to deal with them because it’s a grey area between departments. Way to go, I’m so proud of my state! The area they say these 'lil creatures are currently at, let’s just say is uncomfortably close to my backyard. I deal with the stinking coyotes and bears once in a while. I can’t plant flowers because of deer…but I draw the line at bleepidy-bleep wild pigs. By the way, the comparison in numbers to Texas vs Va isn’t really fair as Texas is one big whooping state (plus everyone knows they’re really their own country anyway).</p>
<p>And fishymom - the ‘federal pigs’ would have been seriously funny if they weren’t so close.</p>
<p>We’re dealing with them (poorly) in areas of Pennsylvania, too. States such as SC, FL and TX are practically overrun. Other states are slowly starting to realize what a serious and intractable problem these things can quickly become.</p>
<p>Ever since reading and seeing “Old Yeller” I have had a healthy respect for feral pigs aka wild boars.Yikes!</p>
<p>We’ve had a problem with coyotes here where I live. Would be happy to send some up to the DC 'burbs. That would take care of the pig problem…</p>
<p>Well…they’re tasty.</p>
<p>OK, my first response before reading the article, was to allow bow hunters to hunt them. Then I read that supposedly they were imported for hunting (illegally). :eek: That’s just crazy. You don’t mess with them!</p>
<p>We had them close to home when we lived in Germany. BI if you think the deer are hard on your plants, you haven’t seen anything until you see what these pigs can do. They totally root around and destroy anything they can get their teeth and tusks on. Yikes!</p>
<p>Forgive a bit of academic pedantry but the story of feral pigs is far more important to our history than one might think, even with the recent cultural obsession over bacon. </p>
<p>If you go back to the early colonial era, poorer people trying to make it - often former indentured servants (read as “white slaves for a term of years”) - tended to live on the fringes of settlements. The easiest way for them to generate protein and a living was to raise pigs and let them forage. Some would never be caught but the pigs would multiply in any case. (They used a variety of techniques to keep them near, including some hobbling and bells and so on.) The alternative would have been to construct pens, but that required clearing space, making sturdy fences (pigs can get through anything by digging and, frankly, they’re smarter than many people I’ve known), and of course feeding them. Feeding penned pigs meant more effort getting making and getting crops, all of which diverted effort from the main goal of staying alive and getting ahead. </p>
<p>So the pigs roamed. And what did they do? They ate the native Americans’ food. These locals were essentially farmers who hunted. What would you do if you found pigs eating your food? You’d kill them. But the pigs “belonged” to white people. And the white people didn’t like paying for the damages the pigs were doing. And people being people, there were arguments and sometimes those blossomed into violence. (No automatic weapons with large magazines then so at least the conflicts only killed individuals.) </p>
<p>So you had pigs eating crops being killed by natives. And this resulted not only in violence but in law suits. There are records of natives suing and being sued for crop damage, pig deaths, etc. There are criminal cases against natives and white people for assaults because of the freaking pigs. </p>
<p>And of course the natives tended to get the short end of the stick, especially in court, and the primitive legal system couldn’t keep up with the damage inflicted by foraging swine. What happened? Rebellion. If you go through bloody conflicts like King Philip’s War, you find that all the talk about land pressure and colonists often boils down to the white people letting pigs destroy the native food supplies, sometimes on purpose, but mostly because each individual only cared about his own life and his own pigs. (Another example where belief in the beneficial role of self-interest founders on reality.) </p>
<p>So when you hunt the feral pigs, you are re-enacting a drama from the 17th Century.</p>
<p>These pigs are beyond nasty. They are deeply in Texas. They can literally tear a inground sprinkler system out of the ground. They will harm your dogs and pet if given the opportunity.</p>
<p>I have never heard of this in my life. I am flabbergasted.</p>
<p>I would think dem pigs makes gooood eatin!</p>
<p>Barbeque–great eating!</p>
<p>Coyotes won’t help with the wild pigs much. The pigs get LOTS heftier than the coyotes around here. </p>
<p>Our parks have tried, but nothing has worked yet. And they are about the biggest danger (sans rattlesnakes) that I worry about when hiking. Forget the mountain lion, it is the pig that will do you in. I’d just as soon deal with a bear in Yosemite.</p>
<p>We have family land in Texas. The feral hogs are TERRIBLE for the property. They promote erosion of land by uprooting trees and they compete with other, more desirable wildlife for food. AND they breed and reproduce like CRAZY. We trap them, hunt them, cook them and eat them. AT LEAST they are a very viable and extremely tasty food source. We kill them as fast and in as great of numbers as we can. You can hardly eradicate them by hunting - they’re just masters of the art of multiplying.</p>
<p>this gets my vote as one of the most unusual CC threads of 2012!</p>
<p>Therfe is a rapidly growing population in our neck of the woods. They are a real problem in vineyards and really, anywhere. I believe they can be hunted year round, both with bow and gun. There is no way hunting will keep up with the population explosion.</p>
<p>From yesterday’s Seattle Times:
“RANT AND RAVE Rant to the clods who lost or abandoned three little pigs in my Seattle neighborhood. They were scared, shelterless and left to forage for whatever food they could find. As a result of your ineptitude, recently landscaped gardens and lawn have been rooted to smithereens and the pigs, who are clearly not wild, have been running and rooting for their lives. Rave to Seattle Animal Control for their persistent support and the weeklong efforts for a humane capture.”</p>
<p>My SIL volunteers with a facility for feral cats. People would dump cats by the side of the road and they breed away. Much like rabbits (which are also a huge problem, but at least they don’t attack).
There are coyotes down the road from me, killed a sheep a few months back (we are in a very suburban area with some people keeping sheep and goats). When animal control tried to take out said coyote, the mom of one of #2D’s friends did a blockade/protest so the coyote is still out there.</p>
<p>*
this gets my vote as one of the most unusual CC threads of 2012!*</p>
<p>I think this is certainly one of the most random threads I’ve ever started.
I mostly started it as an example of stuff our kids are learning that we don’t know anything about.
I was surprised that feral pigs were a problem outside of the Everglades, but I’m glad my daughter wasn’t losing her common sense!</p>