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There\u2019s something to be said for local knowledge. Some of my southern relatives have a level of fear when they think about driving on the hilly, curvy roads of the northeast. Our California friends thought I was silly to want a wildfire app on my last trip to that side of the country. And then there are those who take tornadoes and hurricanes as much in stride as I do snow storms and secondary roads. Useful local knowledge does not need to be limited to dramatic weather events and road conditions. There are always critters. The coyotes that sounds like giant mice. Fire ants. The hiking trail that closes down when the senior \u2018gator mama has babies and the back roads where cars stop for as long as it takes for turkeys or geese to get their entire crews to the other side. (By the way, my Favorite Two-Year-Old recently informed me that turkeys say, \u201cgiggle, giggle, giggle.\u201d Frankly, I had wondered.) But what\u2019s a pig spotter? I was on the phone with a friend who was heading north into Georgia. I thought I misheard her. \u201cThere sure are a lot of pigs out tonight,\u201d she said. I knew she was on the highway, partway to her destination, not all that far away from home. Never one to miss out on something new, I asked her about the pigs. She laughed and said, \u201cthey\u2019re feral pigs,\u201d as if that would be the end of the discussion. And, for a short time it was. I did wonder \u2014 at least a little bit \u2014 if I was being punked. I think she just assumed that everyone knew about the feral pigs wandering alongside the highway. I\u2019ll admit it: I did not. But a temporary living situation has Favorite Husband and me spending quite a bit of time driving between two barrier islands, and I-95 is the quickest way from point A to point B. So I decided to start looking for pigs. It took me a little while to catch on and catch up with them. Some of the exits and exchanges are considerably busier than others. There\u2019s construction taking place near one. Lots of trees cut down beside another. Those are not good places to look. Obviously weigh stations and agricultural inspection stops are places that don\u2019t work for the pigs. It turns out they\u2019re picky about timing, too: they\u2019re pretty scarce on the Sundays that mowing and roadside trash pick-up take place. (Stage whisper: Speaking of pigs, you\u2019d be amazed at the amount of trash that gets manually collected every other week.) Eventually I found them. Usually the first sign is the tall, slender white birds grazing near the treeline in that ten-ish mile stretch of road the pigs use as an all-you-can-eat buffet. Their elegant feathers and demeanor rival any snooty m\u2019aitre d you can picture. Sometimes there are one or two diners in the area, sometimes a mama and a bunch of little piglets. And, from time to time, there\u2019s the black bump beyond the shoulder that turns out to be the silhouette of a giant truck tire piece. You know how they say \u2018curiosity killed the cat?\u2019 Well, sometimes satisfying that curiosity is not all that great for enjoying the sights and sounds around us. You\u2019d think by now I\u2019d have developed a little bit of intuition about when to leave well enough alone. You know… to not look under that rock? Spoiler alert: I haven\u2019t. I wanted to know more about the pigs. I was probably better off letting my mind wander, untethered, to check in on the Three Little, the This Littles, Pooh\u2019s friend Piglet, as well as Porky, Petunia, and Wilbur. I\u2019m clearly not alone in enjoying whimsical, fictional swine. I may have been alone in appreciating the living, breathing, four-legged variety. Georgia has a pig problem. While wild pigs have spread out around the country, the feral pig population in that state is rivalled only by the throngs in neighboring Florida. And Texas. The Department of Natural Resources refers to the sneaky swine them a one of the greatest invasive species challenges facing the state. Still… invasive? Really? The term \u2018invasive species\u2019 seems a little harsh.\u00a0All feral swine are members of the same species \u2013\u00a0Sus scrofa \u2014 but part of their invasiveness and stealth involves the use of aliases. not one, but several:\u00a0wild boar, feral swine, Eurasian wild boar, wild hogs, and wild pigs. Are they truly non-native and do they rob natural resources from legit members of the eco-system? Spanish explorers in the early 16th\u00a0century brought pigs as part of their entourage. Apparently they roamed around through forests and fields, mountains and marshes. They went where they wanted, when they wanted to \u2014 until settlers developed a craving for chops and roasts. This arrangement continued\u2014 somewhat successfully \u2014 for three hundred years or so until some wise guy decided there weren\u2019t enough things to shoot at and introduced Eurasian wild boar\u00a0for sport hunting. Apparently the new arrivals had tremendously attractive accents causing the domestic swine to swoon. A porcine population explosion ensued. Free range farming practices were outlawed and unclaimed critters went on the lam, munching their way across the land. These days their ravenous appetites, indiscriminate taste, and robust good health can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in property and crop damage per year. I\u2019ll spare you the gory details of the aggressive measures that have been approved and implemented to stop the ravaging of farmers\u2019 fields. As much as I previously enjoyed the surprising sight of pigs in an unusual environment, I\u2019m far more sympathetic to the farmers than I expected to be. I\u2019m seeing four-legged locusts rather than silly, endearing storybook characters. Maybe next time I won\u2019t look under that rock. ## [bctt tweet=”You\u2019d think by now I\u2019d have developed a little bit of intuition about when to leave well enough alone. You know… to not look under that rock? Spoiler alert: I haven\u2019t.” username=”AndreaPatten”] [bctt tweet=”Obviously weigh stations and agricultural inspection stops are places that don\u2019t work for the pigs. It turns out they\u2019re picky about timing, too: they\u2019re pretty scarce on Sundays.” username=”AndreaPatten”] [bctt tweet=”I was probably better off letting my mind wander, untethered, to check in on the the Three Little, the This Littles, Pooh\u2019s friend Piglet, as well as Porky, Petunia, and Wilbur.” username=”AndreaPatten”]      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[623,625,9],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-14857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals","category-nature","category-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14857"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14873,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14857\/revisions\/14873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14857"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=14857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}