: The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp
: by Steve Washam
: based on a telling by George Gordon
: Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up
: some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few
: possessions--especially his traps--and drove south. Several weeks
: later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp
: in Georgia. It was a Saturday morning--a lazy day--when he walked
: into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were
: seven or eight of the town's local citizens. The traveler spoke,
: "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee
: Swamp?"Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy.
: "You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.
: "I am. I'm from North Dakota," said the stranger.
: "In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old
: man explained."A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to
: die!"
: He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the
: swamp."
: Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm
: bit off!" "Those pigs have been free since the Revolution,
: eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for
: over a hundred years. They're wild and they're dangerous. You can't
: trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself."
: Every man nodded his head in agreement.
: The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could
: you direct me to the swamp?"
: They said, "Well, yeah, it's due south--straight down the
: road." But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew
: he'd meet a terrible fate.
: He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the
: wagon."
: And they did.
: Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The
: townsfolk thought they'd never see him again.
: Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store,
: got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn.
: After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.
: Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought ten sacks of corn.
: This went on for a month. And then two months, and three. Every week or
: two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load
: up ten sacks of corn and drive off south into the swamp. The stranger
: soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much
: speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this
: man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be
: consumed by the wild and free hogs.
: One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted
: more corn.
: He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of
: men were gathered around the stove. He took off his gloves.
: "Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire about ten or
: fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs
: out in the swamp, penned up, and they're all hungry. I've got to get
: them to market right away." "You've WHAT in the
: swamp?" asked the storekeeper, incredulously. "I have six
: thousand hogs penned up. They haven't eaten for two or three days,
: and they'll starve if I don't get back there to feed and take care of
: them."
: One of the oldtimers said, "You mean you've captured the wild hogs
: of the Okefenokee?"
: "That's right."
: "How did you do that? What did you do?" the men urged,
: breathlessly. One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my arm!"
: "I lost my brother!" cried another.
: "I lost my leg to those wild boars!" chimed a third. The
: trapper said, "Well, the first week I went in there they were
: wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn't come out. I
: dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon.
: Every day I'd spread a sack of corn.
: "The old pigs would have nothing to do with it. But the younger
: pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root
: out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn
: first. "I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs
: decided that it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all
: free; they were not penned up. They could run off in any direction
: they wanted at any time. "The next thing was to get them used to
: eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and
: I started putting the corn in the clearing.
: "At first they wouldn't come to the clearing. It was too far. It
: was too open. It was a nuisance to them.
: "But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in
: the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own
: snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it
: was easier to come to the clearing every day.
: "And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get
: their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots and
: snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all free.
: They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds
: upon them. "The next step was to get them used to fence posts.
: So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in
: the underbrush so that they wouldn't get suspicious or upset, after
: all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the
: trees and the brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to
: walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.
: "This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to
: walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back
: out through the fence posts.
: "The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left
: a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the
: openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail,
: after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or
: independence--they could always jump over the rail and flee in any
: direction at any time.
: "Now I decided that I wouldn't feed them every day. I began to feed
: them every other day. On the days I didn't feed them, the pigs still
: gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they
: begged and pleaded with me to feed them-- but I only fed them every
: other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.
: "Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now
: they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and
: finding their own food, they now needed me. They needed my corn every
: other day." "So I trained them that I would feed them every
: day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around
: the fence.
: "But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there
: were several gates and they could run in and out at will.
: "Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates
: but one, and I fed them very, very well."
: "Yesterday I closed the last gate and today I need you to help me
: take these pigs to market."
: The price of free corn
: The parable of the pigs has a serious moral lesson. This story is about
: federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and
: independent people.
: Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only individuals
: to a state of dependency; state and local governments are also on the
: fast track to elimination, due to their functions being subverted by
: the command and control structures of federal "revenue
: sharing" programs. Please copy this parable and send it to all
: of your state and local elected leaders and other concerned citizens.
: Tell them: "Just say NO to federal corn." The bacon you
: save may be your own.
: (c) 1997, The Idaho Observer. All rights reserved.
: Permission granted to reproduce for non commercial purposes in entirety
: including this notice.
You may think it's bad in the good ole USA, but, honey, come North. It's damn near a welfare state here. Aarrrrrrrgghhhh!
