January 06, 2007

• Welcome back I say, but might mean Wildboarclough end will have to rethink their tourist pitch.
• This is a job for Obelix!
• A nod to Georgia's previous piggy problems.
• Rumour has it this may be the year of the golden boar...... (And we've had quite a few 猪 - inoshishi - wild boar - attacks this year but bugger if I can find any in English instead of Japanese. You'll just have to take my word for it.)
• Bigger than Hogzilla
• > Another farmer who did not want to be named said he wanted to shoot them all. Ah farmers! Guardians of the countryside, stewards of Mother Nature's bounty, can you not help but love them?
• Dude, if that farmer wants to eat boars that have been eating things like dachsunds and cigarette butts, that's his lookout. Myself, I get my wild boar fix from these guys at London's Borough Food Market. Mmmmmm, boar!
• English domestic swine take out their frustrations.
• Bumps and bruises!?! Where are his bites and missing bits?
• My thoughts too bees - I was always led to believe a sow could bite your leg off if she were so inclined.
• Minor menu peeve: restaurant menus featuring "Wild Boar" as an offering. Most of that pork is no more wild than the "Wylde Raspberrie" in a Bonnie Bell Lip Smacker. bleah. The real solution to wild boar infestations: introduce wild tigers to Britain. Georgia, too. What's not to love?
• This comment is being posted for Lafe, cos apparently the tracikraken broke the firc. Or something. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This post has inspired me to share a story. It is about my Uncle Chuck. Now, my Uncle Chuck has been, and possibly still is, crazy. Not cat-lady crazy, or drug-induced-insanity crazy. More like "I wouldn't want to see *him* pissed off" crazy. Don't get me wrong, he's not a bad fellow in any sense of the word. He's been an excellent (as near as I can tell) father to my cousins. He can be a bit difficult to get along with if you're at all self-deluded, 'cause he doesn't really pull any punches when he's decided he knows what's wrong with you. But he has always been my coolest uncle. Plus, he has the most excellent gun collection. Uncle Chuck was a green beret in Viet Nam. And no, he will not talk about it. Most folks actually don't even know that about him. This doesn't keep it from taking *only* one encounter for even the most disrespectful and/or cocky thug/hooligan/idiot to realize right down to his yellow-bellied bones that this is a man with whom one does not fuck. In hindsight, this probably really irritated my female cousin when trying to find dates. But I digress... This particular story takes place in West Texas about 19 or 20 years back. My female cousin was 4 years old at the time and absolutely cute as a button (despite her disturbing tendency to bite when you were giving her a hug... ouch). It is no coincidence that she could hit a coke can with her .22 rifle at 100 yards at that age either... Anyhow, my Uncle Chuck was in the habit of trapping wild hogs at the time. These weren't your razorback sort of hogs, but more "giant pig" sort of hogs. And yes, they grew tusks. The boars tended to run to about 350 lbs of ill-tempered pork. His method was pretty simple... set out wire-cage traps, visit them a few times a week with his truck, and if there was a wild hog present, he'd hook up a ramp into the back of his utility truck, back it up to the cage, put up sides on the ramp, and open the cage. The hog would usually charge right up the ramp into the back of the truck. If it didn't, a couple pokes with a stick would piss it off in the proper direction and off it'd go. Close up truck, take up ramp, and back to town to drop it off for some quick cash. Something like this. (..cont)
• On this particular day, my cousin was with him, he made some quick rounds not expecting to find anything, but sure enough the first trap he checked had a nice big boar in it. He was later clocked in at something around 340 lbs. So he backed up to the trap, set out the ramp, put up the sides, and pulled up gate to the trap. Right at that moment he looked up in to the back of the truck and saw that my cousin had slid open the sliding glass window in the rear of the cab, and for whatever reason was lowering herself into the back of the pickup truck. So, naturally, he reaches over the sides, grabs the boar by the hind legs as it's charging up the ramp, and hauls it out onto the dirt. At this point, the boar was fairly irritated. As soon as it figured out where it was, it swung around and was after my Uncle Chuck. Right about that same time, my Uncle Chuck realized the danger and lit out around the side of the truck. They did circles around the truck for a little bit... my Uncle's greater maneuverability keeping him ahead of the pissed off hog, but both of them knew that it wasn't something that'd keep working forever. So on one pass around the truck, instead of, I dunno, leaping out of danger, my Uncle instead opts to grab a 4-way tire iron (presumably the only suitably heavy thing within easy reach as he sprinted around the truck) and begins whacking the boar repeatedly on the head while trying to stay the proverbial one step ahead of it. From his account, it took two passes around the truck and an unknown number of whacks before the 4-way tire iron became a 3-way tire iron. The hog, at this point had graduated to really-freaking-pissed-as-hell. Realizing the futility of this particular approach, my Uncle hops into the back of the truck, reaches through the still-open sliding glass window into the glove compartment, pulls out his service .45, walks over to the side of the truck, and shoots the hog in the head. Why he didn't take this approach from the get-go, I have no earthly idea. One would like to think that perhaps it just hadn't occurred to him yet in the heat of the moment. Myself, I think he probably thought that just wouldn't be as much fun. Oh, and we ate that hog at Thanksgiving. He wasn't particularly good. Uncle Chuck sure seemed to enjoy it though. Posted by Lafe, via #mofirc (on irc.slashnet.org -- GO THERE NOW)
• Oh boy! *claps*
• That is one awesome story. Now if I could only figure out why Lafe can't comment personally, you could all applaud him in person.
• Okay never mind.
• *applause*
• *more applause*
• Thank you all for the encouragement and help getting the comment out. Turns out my comment was just too darn long. Sorry for the troubles.
• If ever anyone has won a thread, well, the Lafe post is it.
• *not sure whether she should take the pig's side, as he was obviously out-boared!
• I've had days where I've been that boared. Good story.