Unlimited bacon
It seemed like a good idea at the time. The price of pork was up and the supply was down so instead of toughing out the shortage, the 1980’s Canadian government allowed the importation of some wild boars from Europe to supplement the Canadian pork growers output. The wild boars were great reproducers and everyone was making money…until the traditional pigs rebounded. The market got flooded with Canadian pork and the price dropped. So around 2001 the pork producers out West just tore down their fences and let the European pigs run free, perhaps thinking the bears would eat them. You can’t fool mother nature though and these big furry beasts decided they liked the cold weather and found they could eat most anything that grows above or even below the ground. That is how we got an exploding population of hard-to-eradicate “Super Pigs” in Canada that is threatening to spill south of the border, into northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana. The wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create the “super pig. A professor at the University of Saskatchewan calls feral swine, “the most invasive animal on the planet” and “an ecological train wreck.”
Eradication of wild pigs is no longer possible in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Professor Brook said. But the situation isn’t hopeless everywhere and a few U.S. states have eliminated them. The key, he said, is having a detection system that finds them early and fast, and then responding quickly. “Nobody should be surprised when pigs start walking across that border if they haven’t already,” Ryan Brook, PhD. said. “The question is: What will be done about it?” That could include big ground traps with names like “BoarBuster” or net guns fired from helicopters. Some states and provinces embrace crowdsourced “Squeal on Pigs” tracking programs. Meanwhile, the USDA is using aircraft and drones to “beef “up surveillance along the northern border. Wild boars are also susceptible to diseases that can affect humans and in Europe some of their meat is banned.
Wild pigs are already causing billions of dollars of damage and crop losses in the Southeast United States. But so far, the Southern pigs do not like the cold in the north and the humans are trying to keep the Northern pigs from finding out about the better weather in the South. Apparently, Facebook has not been any help with this program. So both in Canada and the southern US large traps, open hunting, and airborne hunts are the main means of eliminating the invaders before they out eat the people. Perhaps this should be a cautionary tale for those that want to out engineer the existing environment.
Porcine Puns
Did you hear about the agreeable French pig?
He went oui oui oui, all the way home!
Why did Harry Potter bring his pig to the vet?
Because it had hog warts.
What do you call a town full of pigs?
A hamlet.
Kim Jong Un visits a pig farm somewhere in rural North Korea. A photograph of him with some pigs is printed in the press.
The caption reads: Several pigs surrounding Dear Leader (3rd from left).
November 24th Birthdays
1978 – Katherine Heigle, 1990 – Sarah Hyland, 1993 – Hande Ercel, 1972 – Lola Glaudini
1888 – Dale Carnegie,1925 – William F. Buckley, 1997 – Peyton Meyer, 1983 – Gwilym Lee