MILLIONS of wild pigs abound in sunny Florida!

  They are particularly in great numbers in the more remote areas, but much to the horror of city dwellers, St. Petersburg and Tampa residents occasionally will see a huge herd of slash-toothed oinks dashing down their main streets!

  The theory is that in the late 1500’s and 1600’s, the flimsy ships of the Portuguese, Spanish, Italians and French that cruised the coasts of Florida and shipwrecked,  carried a couple dozen pigs to slaughter for fresh meat.  When the ships wrecked, though the humans usually drowned, the piggies swam to shore and dived into the jungle.

  By our present time, those pigs were joined by pigs escaped from farms, Berkshire pigs, French pigs, American pigs, and FINALLY pot-bellied Vietnamese pigs!  Pigs is Pigs, and they proliferate at about six-to-one every six months.

  This writer’s daughter has  a ranch of about 28 acres in central Florida.  She does not live there but visits regularly, and as a result, this writer and wife who live nearby with another daughter, keep an eye on the farm.

  Some ten years ago, we lived at the farm, and were surprised in our first week there by getting up for an early breakfast and finding thirty wild pigs of various sizes and kinds rooting up the lawn by the house.

  We took our cameras and sat on the steps of the back porch, and were absolutely flabbergasted when a huge fat and round sow came right to our hand and demanded food…she was someones pet pig that had joined the wild group.  She had seven minuscule pigs following her around, and a bit further away, there were at least twenty big and BIGGER pigs or HOGS, some of whom had the slanty heads and long visible slashing teeth of the wild boar.

  We fed our new fat pig friend dog food, which our Newfoundland dog found infuriating…if allowed out the house, he would attack and kill the smaller pigs.

  From day to day, as we did not harm them, the pigs conglomerated and multiplied.  One day we counted separately more than a hundred of many colors, sizes, and dispositions.  None here seemed to be belligerent, and our pet pork came every day with her brood for dog food.

  We made a trip to North Florida, and coming back on a deserted highway, this scrivener stopped the car and got out for a call of nature.  While accomplishing that, he looked up and found a huge stream of VERY MEAN and wild tuskers coming down a ravine at him!

  Quick was the word and he was up a tree.  The tusked wild boars stayed  awhile at the bottom of the tree and showed their belligerence while this writer’s wife had hysterics locked in the parked car.

  They went away and the trip was resumed, but it was a warning that the REAL WILD BOARS are dangerous for humans, if the ordinary mixed pigs are not.

  Recently we were visited by a PIG MAN from the government who got permission to trap the pigs on our daughter’s farm/ranch.

  The first week, he caught twenty-six varied wild pigs.

  We were interested to find that the Florida State Government had leased 30,000 acres to the North and fenced it with deeply buried wire fence and that these pigs were being trapped by pig men all over the state, and dumped on their own 30,000 acres to proliferate, serenely unhurt!

  One’s imagination can easlily envisage four to five million pigs soon overloading the 30,000 acres and eventually tunneling out, to re-infest the whole state and bordering states.

  An easy and acceptable solution might be a mass return to the wonders of ham sandwiches, boiled and baked hams, sausages, wieners, and chitterlings for the conoisseur!