Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Animal Kingdom; 2012

 “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us.

Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

Sir Winston Churchill

The boars knew their place in the animal kingdom. Since the extinction or endangerment of many large cats and wolves in the Panhandle nearly seven decades ago, the boar had no equal beyond man. Their physical, mental, and social makeup surpassed every other creature except humans. In one critical aspect, however, the hogs actually exceeded man’s capabilities: their ability and willingness to modify behaviors independently and collectively to enhance the sounder’s sustainability.

During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the boars feebly accepted a rapidly deteriorating environment; however, in the second decade of the new millennium, unrest festered within the sounders when a confluence of perceived human events ravaged their habitat again.  

Resentment brewed as the dominant hybrid males began questioning, “Are we not equal to man? Why do we, equals of man, continue to suffer at the hands of man? They take our lands and wreak havoc on the environment. When will the boar nation begin to punish the culprits crippling its lands?”

On Monday, November 12, 2012, shortly after seven p.m., unbeknownst to man, a faction of wild boars had unofficially given notice that justice would indeed be served.

With their stout shoulders tapering to their hindquarters, the boar was built to be compact, powerful, fast, and agile. Compared to domesticated pigs, their longer legs enabled them to reach top speeds rapidly with the ability to change direction on a dime. Incredibly athletic, boars could swim at a great pace and distance. Their pricked, highly sensitive ears enabled them to detect and localize sound to just four degrees, which allowed them to pinpoint noise better than any other creature in the animal kingdom. Multiple sensory receptors in their nasal disc at the end of their snout allowed the vermin to exploit an extraordinary sense of smell, detecting odors several miles away as well as several feet underground. They used their snouts as highly effective tools to manipulate objects and to dig deep into the soil. Over time through combat, their skin had toughened and hardened from cartilage and scar tissue, forming a shield over the most vulnerable parts of their bodies. A shield so tough it could repel bullets that would take down any other animal its size. Their ultra-sharp tusks could slice and penetrate almost anything except another boar’s skin. The species’ physical attributes created the perfect proportions in size, speed, agility, and toughness; characteristics not just to protect and to defend but to attack as well.  

Both cunning and malicious, the boars’ mental capabilities were unrivaled. Few animals had adapted their natural gifts to their existing environment better than the boar. If roots and nuts were accessible underground, they used their snouts and tusks to root them out. If small game and animals were abundant, they hunted them down using their tusks as lethal weapons.

Being opportunistic omnivores, the boars adjusted to conditions and ate almost anything. As their preferred wooded areas shrank, the boars learned to thrive in grasslands and a multitude of geographic ranges. The one aspect the boar had not altered over time was its fierceness, particularly when a piglet was in harm’s way. If necessary, wild boars charged, attacked, and attempted to fatally wound any competitor, willing to fight to the death. They feared nothing when they, or one of their own, were under attack.

Socially, boars formed elaborate, all-inclusive groups consisting of between a half-dozen to as large as one hundred members or more. They communicated using more than twenty different vocalizations such as grunts, squeals, and growls, allowing constant communication with one another. Their social network was as sophisticated as any in the animal kingdom.

Whether greeting each other by touching snouts, snuggling in groups to stay warm, or grooming one another, the boars understood their superiority was not only in their physical prowess but their mental and social makeups as well.  

Within the sounder, while females were nursing they shared maternal duties after the piglets were a couple of weeks old. Sows encouraged the piglets to play, frolic, chase, sprint, swim, and follow their instincts within the protection of the sounder.

Hygiene was another important aspect to the boars’ well-being. The animals only excreted wastes far from their feeding and nesting areas.

With their individual and collective mind-sets structured to advance the species, the wild hogs were thriving. Open-minded, they willfully adopted and even enhanced relevant attributes of other carnivores and herbivores, as well as animals of solitude and of communal nature. Over generations, this meant the boars not only surpassed but widened their physical, mental, and social preeminence over any potential rivals. And as the environment began to rapidly change, so too did the boar. Whereas man had checks and balances to restrain fundamental change in unexpected times, the boars’ social structure allowed for radical change as circumstances dictated. The boar nation realized they had become the most powerful, vibrant, calculating, and ruthless beast to roam the region in decades. Their time as a nation had arrived.

And boars, with high intelligence and lucid memories, had their own legends of which they as a nation were proud. They proclaimed to one another and to subsequent generations their history as a species: of ancestors who died at the hands of Mycenae warriors creating battle helmets of leather and boar tusks; of their kind, persecuted and slaughtered to extinction by medieval British proving their hunting prowess; of Asian ancestors who prevailed in battles with tigers. To these they added more modern tales of boars who fled for their lives, leaving mayhem and death behind. The fleeing boars told horrifying tales of infamous humans who used surprise and noise to devastate large numbers of their species. These humans killed, not to eat or for survival as boars have done. Indeed, boars admit those types of deaths, while mourned, are quite understandable. No, these humans acted entirely unprovoked and slaughtered members of the boar nation only to leave their bloody bodies to rot, often in heaps of innumerous carcasses. One even went so far as to collect pieces of the bodies to decorate himself, but not for any kind of needed protection. For vanity. Simply for vanity.

As more and more boars found themselves among those targeted for slaughter, the stories of these dishonorable humans grew until they identified six in particular—six especially evil because they not only slaughtered boars, they incited other humans to slaughter as well. These infamous six became identified as the Boars’ Most Wanted, the ones they were determined to strike against and exact revenge. The ones they would destroy at all costs. The rumors of the six had circulated for years. Their descriptions were well-embedded in the minds of all boars.

In this way, the genus would continue to flourish as the boars sought out their greatest threat. Unlike man, they did not make war amongst themselves. Instead, a small faction determined to wage war against the one enemy they had left.

For now, they considered themselves equals of man. But the future would belong to them.