They were adorable.<\/p>\n
We didn’t see Mama Hog, but she must have been nearby. \u00a0Good thing we weren’t on foot. Mama hogs are like Mama bears in defense of their young.<\/p>\n
Wild hogs are a\u00a0big\u00a0problem in Georgia and throughout the Southeast. They can do a lot of damage to farms<\/a>, native plants<\/a>, and even golf courses, and they have multiplied out of control. They’re one of the few animals that you can shoot anytime on private land<\/a> with no limits.<\/p>\n I’ve not encountered an adult hog, except indirectly<\/a>. Hope I never do. The males average around 200 pounds, and there are occasional reports of some that are hundreds of pounds larger than that.<\/p>\n Their jaws are very strong – to crack very hard nuts or break bones of the carcasses they eat. They can swim and they can run really fast – up to 30 mph<\/a>.<\/p>\n Contrary to popular legend, they aren’t aggressive and rarely attack people – usually only hunters who’ve cornered them, or people who inadvertently get between Mama and piglets. They will do bluff charges, so it’s best to stand your ground – but look for a tree to climb, just in case.<\/p>\n None of those scenarios came to mind when we saw the piglets. I’d have picked them up and snuggled them if I could.<\/p>\n There’s just something about baby animals.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2005, the year that Ian Frazier’s fabulous piece about wild hogs ran in the New Yorker.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we were driving out of the Chattahoochee National Forest yesterday, two little brown dogs suddenly popped out and began crossing the road. Then they turned – and they weren’t dogs. They were PIGLETS. Furry, with brown stripes. When they saw us in\u00a0Xena\u00a0and heard the growl of her engine, they squealed and went flying down … read more Little squealers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[16,915,914,500,913,912],"class_list":["post-7704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-16","tag-chattahoochee","tag-feral","tag-forest","tag-hogs","tag-pigs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7711,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions\/7711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IMG_5759\"](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/IMG_5759.jpg\")
<\/p>\n