Dead pig rarely lasts two days in the Florida prairie, not even scraps. Vultures home in on carrion within hours of that final hog’s breath, staking out the carcass until only big bones are left.
I don’t often see a pig in the wild — live or dead — but live ones invariably flee. Feral pigs are smart with little reason to expect good intention. They wise to traps and walk away from food if the suspected cost is capture, making culling on public land difficult and unending.
The porcine stamp on nature, conspicuous and profound, is matched by few other species, stretching from ecosystems to wildlife and habitat. When a herd of pigs, known as a sounder, works the earth, they leave behind a bomb-scarred DMZ. Feral pigs are called invasives, but when you learn a thousand people move to Florida daily, you hesitate to point fingers.
Pigs first scurried down Spanish boat ramps into the new world a half-millennium ago. Three litters of eight per sow, per year, has resulted in nine million in the US. A hungry alligator or panther will take a piglet or pig from time to time, but I’ve only seen it in videos. Because they have so few predators, the pig millions root and reproduce with abandon.
Human-hog similarities in DNA, and behavior, are well-established, as are pig-to-people transplants — hearts, corneas, kidneys. Pig owners can develop an astonishing affinity for them, and often call them pets. Some even allow pigs indoors, not unlike Arnold Ziffel on the old sitcom Green Acres. We also share swine flu with the animals, a virus that wandered north from Veracruz in 2009.
In central Florida outfitters will take you to hunt feral pigs. A Wild Boar Hunt, they say. Pick your weapon — knife, spear, AR — and a boar is guaranteed. For five hundred bucks, they’ll butcher it, too. Cook feral pig right, and it’s tasty. Get enough friends at the feast, I doubt you’ll have a scrap of that dead pig left.