Hog Wild and Dotty

This memoir relates a few experiences with wild pigs and one very close call. My photo is of our dogs, Dotty (left) and Mabel, waiting to go, just go please, in our utility vehicle. Mabel is cute and shy, but Dotty wielded an outsized personality that shone as fearlessness and an endearing elan. At the end of the story you’ll find two links to segments that further illustrate some of its elements.

“Along the way, I began to notice a lot of fresh pig tracks of various sizes and caught the smell of their feces. Unlike other animals, hogs defecate where they sleep. So, clues like that usually meant a sounder, numbering anywhere from a handful to many dozens of swine, camped here for a day before continuing to forage after sundown.

Then we came upon a fresh pile of scat. Somehow, I made it fit the narrative in my head: they were here last night, not now.”

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