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Apr 28, 2010

Outsmarting a wild boar...

Wild boar is a perpetual problem at our farm.  They break through fencing and get at the chickens, they dig up all those lovely yams and sweet potatoes, they damage our vegetable plots digging up earthworms for desert.

All kinds of suggestions have been given to us; shoot them, poison them, trap them, etc.  We reject outright killing.  Trapping, etc never works; they're too wary.

Then they played with this beautiful pegaga patch and turned it into a mud-bath:

pegaga on raised beds Web.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were too distraught to remember to take a picture of the mud-bath.

We rehabilitated the patch twice but each time the pigs came in and turned it into mud again.

Then we sat and decided to think like a pig: it's dark, we can't look upwards to see the sky, we can only see directly in front, sideways and down.  Now what if we see something totally dark in front would we be foolhardy enough to plunge ahead or would we move sideways looking for a path? 

And we came up with this:

black plastic fencing Web.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

pegaga boar ring Web.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was how the rehabilitated patch looked like after a week in the 'dark zone' (the red laterite mud has been topped with compost):

pegaga after rehab Web.JPG 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is signs of the pigs going in circles around the 'dark zone'. Note the mud!

pegaga boar footprints Web.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

pegaga coming back Web.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the patch today after two weeks.  Warms the heart. The possibility are endless! And we don't have to take a life or lives to co-exist. Remember, a life is still a life.