I have come to the conclusion that you can find anything on the Internet. All you have to do is go to Google and the world starts spinning and spitting out anything that has to do with whatever you typed into the search engine’s vast memory. It is almost scary. And don’t even get me started about You Tube. If you can’t find it on You Tube, you very possibly only imagined you had heard a certain song or seen a certain show. But back to Google land. Let me tell you my story.
We took the pups out early for their walk as usual on Friday morning. I start one way with Cricket, and Mac goes the opposite direction with Chase. We meet up in the middle and continue our walk back to the house. Friday morning, Mac told me to walk back to the garden with him, he had something to show me. We walked over to the raised beds where we had planted collards, cabbages, brussels sprouts and broccoli. At the end of each bed were tall wires upon which is growing masses of green bean vines. I saw the vines, all seemed well. Then I turned the corner. Where once huge plants of broccoli and tall sprout stakes had stood were nothing but exposed roots.
Over at the other beds it was the same story. My lovely dutch head cabbage were history and bell pepper plants lay haphazardly on their sides, breathing their last. The only thing left were the beans, some radish, and a few tomato plants. The wire fences had been torn down and dragged across the yard, bent and torn.
We took the pups in and came back out for a good look. We found the tracks and an odd pile of what I will politely call animal scat. It was small and flat, like a cow patty but smaller. The prints where the plants had been violently ripped out of the earth and consumed on the spot seemed to be a split type foot or hoof.
My cousin Crystal, came over to visit and suggested it might be wild hogs. Though we have never been bothered with them in the seven years we’ve been here, it bore looking into. We went inside for coffee and I googled wild hog scat. Low and behold there was the odd pile of poop and the strange animal tracks. I had tried this once before with coyote scat and the next day a neighbor shot a coyote in his back yard. It’s getting to where I feel like I need to be packing heat just to go into my yard. I only hope that the hungry beasties have moved on and don’t return for my beans and tomatoes and radishes. And that Big Foot isn’t on the trail of some well fed wild hogs.
— Sandi McBride is a resident of Jefferson, who blogs regularly and enjoys her garden and her furry and feathered friends. She is a wife and mother of two sons.
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