“It looks like a tornado has hopped from yard to yard,” Carrie Spurlock said to NBC Bay Area. “We’ve tried to deter them, but they keep coming back.”
The piggy invasion has begun; hordes are arriving in the suburbs of San Ramon, California. Over the span of months, an estimated 20 ravenous swine have dug up California Bay Area resident’s gardens and lawns.
The sun rose, illuminating the defiled lawns of the Henry Ranch neighborhood. A neighbor’s surveillance camera caught the action that happened the night before. The feral pigs used the lawn like a salad bar, tearing it up, looking for luscious grub to feast upon, and living in hog heaven. The trap that was laid out the night before never caught anything.
“They don’t even go near the trap,” Jonathan Christensen told NBC Bay Area. “Look at the trap. They’re not interested, and they just tear up the lawn.”
Christensen’s plans blew up in his face; his yard has been torn up twice now. Fool me once.
About 140 traps later, the Bay Area is ready to rumble with wildebeests; everything from pesticides to kill the insects that the pigs love to dine on, to installing motion-sensor lights intended to scare the critters away. The Department of Fish and Game has been called, but have not been around. Around the neighborhood, Dick Seever, owner of Rural Pig Management Inc, has set up 11 traps in San Ramon, and is responsible for the 140 aforementioned traps laid out in the Bay Area. Seever has so far captured 25 pigs, but he says they still keep spawning and rushing from the hills of San Ramon.
“There’s a lot of pigs still up on that hill,” Seever said to NBC Bay Area. “I caught two, but where are the rest coming from?
The pigs are winning.
The humans have been forced to replant their grass, smoothing out their trapezoid shaped lawns. The swine’s feeding frenzies have left around a dozen yards torn up.
“It does feel like we’re under attack,” Spurlock said. “We’ve done everything we know to deter them, and they keep coming back.”
(Picture courtesy of WikiCommons, Facebook, and YouTube)
