{"id":1868,"date":"2021-09-14T15:57:47","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T22:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=1868"},"modified":"2024-11-25T12:04:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T20:04:19","slug":"bless-the-feral-hog-by-laura-van-prooyen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/bless-the-feral-hog-by-laura-van-prooyen\/","title":{"rendered":"“Bless the Feral Hog” by Laura Van Prooyen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"issue83\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0Willow Springs 83<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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“Bless the Feral Hog” by Laura Van Prooyen<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

. . . Saint Francis \/ put his hand on the creased forehead <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch \/ blessings of earth <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘Hog Apocalypse’ may finally be on the horizon.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Texas Department of Agriculture, Commissioner Sid Miller<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn’t bothered by the hogs. In fact,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I welcomed the pack of them foraging in nearby brush,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

an antidote to my loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Hill Country cabin, my companion was the voice<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the radio newscaster I’d listen to afternoons in the parked car,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

doors flung open to the country breeze, to hogs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

dotting the landscape. Sid Miller is not the only one<\/p>\n\n\n\n

who’d call me a fool. If he has his way, farmers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

will lure swine with poison feed so they slowly, painfully<\/p>\n\n\n\n

bleed as their innards bubble up blue. I know<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the hogs cause damage; they scrape land bare,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

burrow holes deep and wide enough to hold a sleeping<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

man. Wasn’t it enough to encourage hunters in helicopters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to shoot from the sky? What if St. Francis<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

put his hand on the hairy forehead<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of one of these sows? Or the creased, wide, shiny<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

forehead of Sid? If the blessings of the earth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

were spoken into us, and we began remembering<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

through our own thick length,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

from the top of our heads through our tired hearts,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

what would we find? The problem of the pigs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

began on a boat. The colonizer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

told the wild hog the loveliness of taking,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of digging into the dirt with her snout, rooting up<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

all she wants. And the sow remembered<\/p>\n\n\n\n

through her own heart about hunger. Her appetite<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

streamed into fourteen mouths sucking at her teats,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

into writhing bodies she would nudge off, snorting<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

go now, eat. Run in a pack and trample<\/p>\n\n\n\n

what you please. Eat every flowering thing.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":23834,"featured_media":1870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1868"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37057,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions\/37057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}