Every so often people will indicate to me that I should write about a particular subject – even though I may know nothing about their subject. I must admit though that has never stopped me in the past. Since I am naturally cantankerous and hard to get along with, I usually write about something else. However, once in a while, a subject is suggested that is just enough off the beaten path that I do consider it.
In this case the subject being suggested by my refined neighbors is none other than “Pigs”. Now it is not those little oinkers typified by Porky Pig who everybody just loves. Not my neighbors, they want me to discuss “Wild Boars”. You have seen them in the movies where the hero and heroine are tramping through a dark and gloomy forest and the camera shoots a head to where this big nasty wild boar is pawing the ground waiting for them to appear.
Now they eventually do show up and the boar charges. The heroine looks round for the hero who has decided to go the other way. The heroine is naturally plucky so she grabs a big cast iron pan out of her backpack which she uses to crack the boar on his head bone and lays him out. A few minutes later the hero shows up, and she snarls “Where the h… have you been?” and lays one up a long side his head. Now not all is lost as when the hero wakes up, he finds the heroine cooking bacon, and after he makes the coffee, they have a nice quiet breakfast.
I realize that most movies do not come out this way, but that is because I do not write the movie scripts – which is most likely why they have never let me write one. If I did, you can bet it would be different. For example, in the above scene, I would have the wild boar wake up, (she had the bacon in her backpack} slink over to the heroine and become her pet forever. If nothing else he would make certain that the hero kept his hands to himself.
Now, I guess I should mention why the neighbors wanted me to write about wild boars – and not Porky Pig. It seems that as The Villages has expanded, the wild boars, who having been living here since the colonial days, have found that their territory has been shrinking. One of the areas that they still have is the area around Lake Deaton. Now the area in which I and my neighbors live abuts Lake Deaton. The Evans Prairie golf course is nearby as well, and we had to wait one time on one hole while they captured a wild boar family on the hole ahead.
Obviously what I am leading up to is as I mentioned our neighborhood abuts the west side of Lake Deaton. Therefore, it was not surprising when one of our handsome neighbors (All of our neighbors are handsome with beautiful wives. It is rather amazing!) heard a big ruckus behind his house very early one morning. The noise was coming from the other side of the fence which protects our neighborhood from the wilds of Lake Deaton. It seems that there were some licensed wild boar hunters back there, and they had hog-tied a young male pig.
The neighbor inquired as to what would happen to the boar. They indicated that they were going to give it to a heroine as a pet – ok, they said it would be taken to a farm. There it would go on welfare and be raised in domestic tranquility – until someday it went to market along with the porky pigs. Life is never easy no matter what you are.
Hmm . . . I wonder how Wild Boar soup tastes. They do say it is good for the common cold!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com