"Of pigs, pets and wild" by Greenpoint

About nine years ago, a small pig was seen wandering around the streets near Round Lake and Mechanicville. It was October, and the foraging was slim. Despite searching through corn stubble in farm fields, the pig got hungry and was easily caught by a motorist, who lured her with a stick of celery.

My husband had always wanted a pet pig. Being more practical, I vetoed the concept; my husband doesn?t eat mammals and pigs don?t lay eggs or produce milk or wool, so I couldn?t see any reason to keep one.

?But pigs are so smart, and it would eat our scraps, and it?s as good as a rototiller if we let it root through the garden before we plant.? That was his argument. I was not swayed.

That is, until the lost pig showed up in Mechanicville. No one could find the owner. No one wanted her. And a colleague who was related to the Mechanicville dog catcher ended up temporarily hosting the pig in her backyard dog kennel, and naming her too: Tulip.

So the little pig came to live with us, in the old calf shed, and has become a member of the farm family. The chickens think she is great company. They share all her scraps, roost on her back and sleep next to her on cold nights. She rarely rototills the gardens, but she does like to follow my husband around when he?s doing chores. ?Best dog I ever had,? he says.

A friend from the mountains of the northern Philippines calls her a native pig, and said the same kind roams the jungles and forests near her home. She started giving us butchering advice and talking machetes until my husband stopped her. ?Tulip is our pet,? he said.

Tulip is small, but bigger than the Vietnamese potbelly pigs that became a pet fad some years ago. We speculate someone got her as a pet, then released her when they realized a pig is a pig and not a puppy. That happens a lot with pet fads.

Released potbelly or other pet pigs are sometimes found and adopted, like Tulip. Some end up in special potbelly pig sanctuaries. Many die. And some join gangs of marauding feral pigs, adding to their populations.

Feral pigs have long been a problem in Florida and Texas. Those populations have spread throughout the South and California. More recently, feral pigs have been showing up in northern states, Michigan and Wisconsin, for example. And feral pigs are in New York too, mainly in the Southern Tier.

There?s no single source of the feral pigs. In Texas and Florida, the pigs have been there for hundreds of years, initially arriving with Spanish explorers and settlers. For the newer populations, conservation departments from a variety of states all say the same thing: Some are released potbelly pigs, formerly pets. Many are Eurasian wild boars that escaped from hog hunting preserves. Some are domestic pigs that wandered off. And some are hybrid crosses of the wild Eurasian boar with other types of swine.

The pigs cause problems because they breed so fast and eat so much. They eat the acorns and ground nuts that would otherwise sustain native populations of deer, bear, squirrels and turkeys, and they eat the eggs of ground nesters like turkey and grouse, turtles and snakes. They kill and eat small animals, including birds, fawn and domestic livestock. And they eat field crops and forest understory plants.

New York?s DEC says the feral swine can quickly destroy native vegetation by rooting and wallowing through fields and forests. An eating machine and a rototiller.

Last week Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio did a piece on feral swine in Clinton County, between Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. A farmer in the town of Peru said the pigs can rip through a cornfield, knocking down plants and eating the ears of corn.

The origin of those pigs ? about three dozen of them ? is unclear, but the fear is that there are enough of them to establish a breeding population and spread rapidly. A long, hard winter might slow them down, but so far, the weather?s been awfully mild.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a 2010 report, estimates there are 4 million feral pigs in the country, half of them in Texas, but adds that a proper census is pretty hard to do. The report says the feral pigs in New York?s Southern Tier appear to be escapees ? or intentional releases ? from a hunting preserve across the Pennsylvania border.

Besides pushing out native species by eating everything in sight, the wild pigs can carry disease, and cause erosion and water pollution by eating ground cover and rooting through soil.

The DEC?s goal is to eradicate the feral swine population, by trapping and hunting. But Mann?s report on NCPR indicated that the nocturnal animals aren?t that easy to hunt. ?Pigs are incredibly smart, adaptable animals. Through the summer and fall, hunters and trappers have only killed half a dozen hogs,? he said.

The DEC says there?s open season on the feral pigs, and asks anyone who shoots one, or even sees one, to alert the agency. So far, there aren?t any in our region.

And we?ll keep Tulip at home.

Margaret Hartley is the Gazette?s Sunday and features editor. Greenpoint appears in the Gazette?s print edition Sundays on the Environment page.

Have a question or a topic you?d like addressed on Greenpoint? Email greenpoint@dailygazette.net.

Source: http://www.dailygazette.com/weblogs/hartley/2012/jan/16/pigs-pets-and-wild/

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