True Story© I Nearly Ended the Feral Pig Apocalypse Once

I HATE talking on the phone.

If you ever so feel inclined to call me on the phone, contain everything you need to say into 180 or fewer seconds, and try to make it include an arrangement to meet in person and have a conversation if one needs to be had.  Otherwise, text me.

                I really don’t answer my phone except for from a very few people, and even those people will try not to try and call me unless just necessary.
I knew the day the call came from a private number that I was setting myself up for some bullshit…

*Phone rings*

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “Evans!”

Me: “Who is this?”

Agent: “You didn’t save the number last time?”

Me: “Private number, I don’t know your voice…  Identify yourself.”

Agent: “Master control calling, we have a big proje--…”

Me: “Wait, the same motherfuckers that dispatched me to Vietnam?”

Agent: “Can I please at least explain why it is that I’m--…”

Me: “The same assholes that sent agents to take me to Guantanamo?”

Agent: “Yes, we’ve apologized for that, have we not?”

Me: “My checking account does not yet reflect any such contrition.”

Agent: “…”

Me: “Look, y’all only call or drop in on me when you feel my life is going too good and needs to be ruined, what is it this time?”

Agent: “Feral hogs”

Me: “hahahaha!”

Agent: “What?”

Me: “I literally laugh every time I think of the feral hog problem.”

Agent: “I am afraid to ask why…”

Me: “Then don’t.  Why me, this time?”

Agent: “Because you have a special set of skills--…”

Me: “I’m an asshole?”

Agent: “Well, among other things, yeah.”

Me: “You wanna know why I laughed?”

Agent: “Shit…   why?”

Me: “Because y’all brought this shit on yourselves.”

Agent: “Huh?”

Me: “Pigs aren’t a native North American species.”

Agent: “…”

Me: “Another of those things those filthy Spanish brought with them to have a ‘little bit of home’ with them to the new land.”

Agent: “…”

Me: “And like Kudzu, the invasive exotic has been fucking the countryside at every chance since.”

Agent: “Are you done?”

Me: “No, I was just about to talk about how the British brought rabbits to Australia and how that is still a proble--…”

Agent: “Look, I am calling for some help here.”

Me: “Fuck you want me to do?”

Agent: “You tend to think your way into and out of messy situations.  6 million or more wild pigs in the United States is a messy problem alright.”

Me: “Not my problem, I’m a city boy and I don’t eat the kinds of meat that needs to be hunted.  Find another sucker.”

Agent: “But all the people you could help…”

Me: “Y’all got professionals for shit like this!”

Agent: “Yeah, but the red tape…  the waste and inactivity.  You’re a jerk, but you get right to shit and get it done.”

Me: “Fine, I make my rules and I answer to me.”

Agent: “Fine.”

                Now I had a task and had to come up with my own rules.  I convinced them that I should be supplied with taxpayer funding for big BIG guns, surveillance equipment and relaxation of all the normal rules of engagement when it came to hunting.  I found that the latter of those requests was no problem, as the rules are off when it comes to wild pigs.  Further, I had to have a team under my command that would collect the hogs as we killed them instead of leaving them to  be eaten by opportunistic predators or cannibalized post-mortem.
Called in a couple of friends of mine who DO hunt, we got to hang out at night with spotlights that they SWORE to sheriffs that they didn’t have before and

MAN, did we hunt some pigs!  All over the south, from Western NC all the way to Texas.  Nothing went to waste, as soon as one was killed, I DEMANDED they were field dressed, tested for disease and sent to local food pantries.
Food pantries?  Damn right.  I was not taking this on if I could not make it beneficial to those in need.  No-waste operation through and through.  All that free-range pork would not be left to rot in a landfill.  The ones too diseased for consumption would be incinerated and the foodworthy ones were processed for FREE food to those in need.  If a taxpayer-funded organization (think schools, etc…) wanted in on it, they paid fair market rate for it.  This made my operation revenue neutral, covering the costs of my materials, travel and to pay my people and I for our work.

                We became KNOWN around, as the dudes with the master plan to end the feral pig apocalypse with the simple Robin Hood theory of using it to feed the poor with it.  From city to city I stopped being the cleanup man, instead getting with the people of the area and teaching THEM best practices and leaving them to be able to get their own food.

Then it happened…

                Everywhere under my watch began building surpluses of this pork and all of a sudden the pork farmer’s industry noticed that poor people were getting FREE pork that was head and shoulders better than the sickly antibiotics-zombie shit that they themselves were trying to sell them and they wanted in.
In came the lobbyists for the industry.  They wanted me to work for them or be decommissioned, nothing in between.  I refused to work for them and could not afford to purchase a senator or three of my own, so I learned another lesson on the cynical hypocrisy of a government “for the people, by the people” as they quickly learned that an escaped pig soon becomes a wild pig when it eventually meets up and herds with OTHER wild pigs and breeds more wild pigs.  Refusing to be of any assistance to an industry, I let them hang themselves with their own rope.

And with the recent return of the worry of Feral Hog Apocalypses, they have too.

Fuck em, I am done with this government.