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An End To A Season Of Pigs
And bow and accept the end. Of a love, or a season.
Every year about this time, in Kona, our full harvest of fruit arrives. This year, in addition to oranges, lemons, grapefruit, tangerines, bananas, and avocado, we have squash.
While I write this, the neighbor’s lot across from our driveway is being ripped to shreds. They have a backhoe in there. New neighbors are on the way, and the thousands of plants, shrubs, trees, flowers, and even fruit growing there, will soon be rocks, sticks, and mulch.
It is not easy to see your neighborhood change. But it is not all bad, either. The destructive pigs, sows with their piglets, sometimes birthed twice a year, have been uprooted. They have moved on. Pigs, I guess, like many of us, don’t like heavy equipment crunching every branch, boulder, and other outdoor furnishing of their nest, into smashed sticks and compost.
Over the years, we have fought the pigs and their invasive species damage with fences, alarms, camera traps, and even noise makers.
All to no avail. The pigs, or their persistent progeny, always win.
Pigs don’t belong in the islands. They cause tons of trouble from avian malaria, (when mosquitoes — also invasive — breed in pig-engineered wallows), to completely destroyed vegetable rows. In our yard, they have dug and…