Every
once in awhile you read a true story that is so terrifying in what it
tells you about human nature, and human insensitivity, that it leaves
you wordless, dumbfounded. In this week's New Yorker, staff writer Ian
Frazier describes the explosion in the number of feral pigs in the US,
animals who have fled their usually-miserable existence on farms and
used their wiles (pigs are very intelligent creatures, smarter than
most dogs and, believe it or not, as able to handle video games as
young schoolchildren) to make a life for themselves in the wild.
Needless to say, hunting and otherwise persecuting these animals has
become a sport for certain cretins of our species.
The exquisite painting above accompanied
Frazier's story, and was done by Walton Ford. It shows a feral pig
facing the second greatest terror (after being separated from its pack)
of any wild animal: being trapped, in this case by a pack of hunting
dogs (such hunting is savage, often resulting in horrific injuries or
death to the pig, the dogs, or both).
Frazier's story is only superficially about feral pigs -- they are the subject, but the backdrop,
the brutish, eye-for-an-eye, evangelical, dilapidated rural South, is
the real story. Both Frazier and Ford have Southern backgrounds, and
the story is a strange, almost mournful love-hate one. Frazier's story,
Hogs Wild, is not yet available online, but it's a keeper -- buy the
magazine for the story and the painting. Here's an excerpt, describing
a wildly popular Georgia 'hog festival' involving a competition of dogs
cornering feral pigs, and if these words don't teach you something
about us, and haunt you to the bottom of your soul, it's time to check
your pulse:
A man
carrying his daughter on his shoulders came and stood near us. The girl
was four or five years old. She had a blocky head, medium-length brown
curls, and intent dark eyes. She wore flower-print sneakers, and her
dad held her by them. She did not give promise of growing up to be
beautiful. I imagined her in adulthood as one of those strong-character
Southern women who speak their minds and make people uncomfortable -- a
fearless old aunt, maybe, or a no-nonsense columnist. Before her dad
brought her today (I'm guessing), he had told her she would be seeing
dogs and pigs. She had pictured (I'm guessing) dogs like their dog at
home and pigs like the ones in the storybooks.
The
first pair of bay dogs entered the arena at the far side of it, a
quarter-circle around the fence from the hogs' gate. The dogs' holders
bent down and took the clips at the ends of the leashes. Skinny boys
climbing on the hog pen banged it to get a hog to move into the chute.
Somebody lifted the plywood door. A boy leaned forward and jabbed the
hog through the fence bars. The hog came out into the arena and began
to trot along the fence's perimeter. The dogs, suddenly released, went
streaking toward him. In their many straps and bucklings, they looked
like a SWAT team, striving faces pointed eagerly at the hog. From her
high view the little girl looked at the dogs, at the hog. Her mind took
a second to understand what was going on. Then in a tone of the
greatest emergency, with an authority that cut through every noise and
rang above the assembly, the little girl cried, "Run, pig! Run!"
Some
people laughed, the way a crowd usually does when a child makes a
remark that everybody hears. Some people said "Aww..." in sympathy. The
little girl, seeing that the pig had nowhere to run to, began to cry,
and her father lifted her down and comforted her. She cried louder when
the pig squealed. A woman standing nearby excitedly took up the girl's
cause, saying, "She's right. What are they doing!" and so on, until her
neighbors shushed her. For a moment we all hesitated, uneasy and off
balance; then we returned to the business at hand. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
