Jeral pigs have roamed the woods of the U.S. for centuries and are a major feature in the U.S. countryside, with one Twitter user famously going viral in 2020 complaining about the “30-50 feral hogs” that kept disturbing their kids playing in the yard.

It seems that these traditional wild boars have now crossbred with domestic pigs, creating huge hybrid hogs that are descending en masse from Canada into the U.S., primed to cause even greater destruction than usual.

These so-called “super pigs” that are moving south from Canada are “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive,” larger in stature than their cousins, and capable of tunneling into snow to survive in colder climes, the Guardian reported in February.

[When we first moved here back in ’99, I was listening to a radio program on the Mobile Bay estuary – which is massive by the way – and the conversation turned to the numbers of alligators in it. Now, remember, alligators 30 years ago were endangered or damn near. So I was SHOCKED when one of the biologists on the program said their surveys indicated there was a population of about 40,000 alligators in the river, bay, and surrounding swampland at the time. 40K!! In the decades since, I have come to learn that a good part of the overwhelming success of alligators locally is thanks to the explosion of the feral hog population. There’s nothing that makes a gator happier than a pig coming down to the water’s edge for a sip and CHOMP. Those suckers can move like lightning to get you, too. The pigs have formed an incredible gator food source and that’s before you get to the big buck crop damage they do in lower Alabama rural counties like the ones next to me. And pigs can be deadly. ~ Beege]