Sus scrofa, or wild boar: one of Louisiana's most invasive species
To say that invaders have been running rough-shod through our garden lately would be an understatement. The saga began one morning in early February after a night of heavy rain, when my beloved set out on her dawn patrol, a daily ritual at this time of year in which she tucks her pajamas into rubber boots, then ambles around the garden in a dressing gown, clutching a cup of tea and looking eccentric while peering about for early jonquils.
Her morning rambles have taken on extra significance since we have learned that the parents of our daughter’s longtime boyfriend—impeccably mannered New England sophisticates interested in literature and racquet sports—will be making their first visit to Louisiana this April. Keen to reassure them that it is, in fact, safe to set foot south of the Mason Dixon Line, my wife has worked diligently this winter to ensure that her garden—lovely at any time of year—looks its best this spring.
“By nightfall your non-hunting correspondent was bristling with paramilitary pig shooting weaponry, including rifles, remote game cameras, night vision goggles, hunting blinds and hog traps. With these I encircled my wife’s garden with layered defenses, and now spend the hours between sunset and sunrise blundering about in the dark, brandishing a rifle and muttering 'Here, piggy piggy' through clenched teeth.”
So, perhaps you can imagine her horror that morning when, instead of delicately emerging daffodils, she discovered large swathes of backyard looking as if someone had taken a backhoe to them. Feral hogs had breached our defenses. The barbarians were at the gate and my wife—the gentlest of gardening souls—was beside herself. To be fair, the damage was considerable. Within thirty feet of the front porch, ragged troughs had been gouged through lawn and flowerbeds, with uprooted azaleas and camellias marking the spots where the hogs had rooted up turf in search of worms or tubers or whatever qualifies as edible to the prolific, omnivorous, repellently named Sus scrofa. While we’ve been seeing signs of hog activity for years, they had never before set trotter into the cultivated garden closest to the house. For this small mercy we credit our three buffoon-ish dogs—noisy, nocturnal beasts who spend the night hours barking themselves hoarse beneath our bedroom windows, an irritant we’re willing to overlook given the benefits. Lately, though, the dogs seem to have lost interest, possibly because the quantity of huge, hairy, cloven-footed beasts out there has finally freaked them out.
“Do something,” wailed my wide-eyed wife, waving a shovel. But what, exactly? Despite having lived in Sportsman’s Paradise for thirty years, I’ve never gotten the hunting habit, and besides a battered twelve-gauge left by some long-departed ancestor, we don’t keep much in the way of firearms. Shooting hogs doesn’t make much of a dent in the population anyway. Described on the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries’ own website as “the most reproductively efficient large mammal on Earth,” Sus scrofa exhibits population dynamics that would make a rabbit wince. Sows are fertile by six months of age, and capable of producing two litters each year of up to ten piglets at a pop. Add the fact that a maternally outraged two-hundred-pound mother hog provides excellent defense against would-be predators and you have a population with the potential to double in size every four months. Take it from a gardener, or at least, the husband of one: if those statistics won’t make you pick up a rifle, nothing will.
I phoned a friend. My wife’s cousin, who is as generous as he is heavily armed, is exactly the kind of neighbor you want to have when the porcine apocalypse comes. By nightfall your non-hunting correspondent was bristling with paramilitary pig shooting weaponry, including rifles, remote game cameras, night vision goggles, hunting blinds and hog traps. With these I encircled my wife’s garden with layered defenses, and now spend the hours between sunset and sunrise blundering about in the dark, brandishing a rifle and muttering “Here, piggy piggy” through clenched teeth. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this, though. Despite having loosed a lot of lead at the invaders, I haven’t made much of a dent in the pig population. Nor have I had a full night’s sleep in weeks.
Still, for now they seem to have gotten the message. There have been no further incursions, and the hogs are staying back in the woods—an uneasy standoff that feels temporary at best. With luck I can hold them off until April, but given the population dynamics and my lack of hunting skills, my time would probably be better spent ringing the property with a hog- (and deer-, and armadillo-, and rabbit-) proof fence. That way, my wife’s garden might actually stand a fighting chance. Until pigs fly, that is.
—James Fox-Smith, publisher
