Payback

Payback is a beautiful thing. For quite a while, problems have arisen in the U.S. due to an influx of illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico. Now there's a wave of unwanted visitors headed the other way, and the Mexicans aren't very happy about it.

Texas Wild Hogs Invade Mexico

Feral hog destruction is well-known in Texas, where about half the nation's wild hogs are found.

... about 2.6 million wild hogs live in Texas, and left unchecked, their population would increase by 20 percent a year, with sows capable of giving birth to litters of six or more piglets every eight months.

... they long have been a major problem to farmers and ranchers, and are also destructive to other forms of wildlife.

Similar to liberals and other pests, the damage is caused not so much by what they consume themselves, but the process they go through to get it. Although they'll eat anything - and I do mean anything (think of them as four-legged cajuns) - they really like grubs and other insects. They'll root up crops and dig up pasture land trying to get the insects. They also are hell on fences. They tear down regular barbed wire or ranch fences. Heavy gauge hog panels are about the only thing that stops them, but it's expensive.

In Mexico, the wild pigs are a new and growing problem along the Texas border. In early May, representatives of four Mexican states attended a hog workshop held in Laredo by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.

Also attending were private Mexican landowners desperate for a way to eliminate the hogs that they say are ruining their livelihoods.

No crop appears immune from the hogs, which destroy much more than they eat...

The wild hogs have destroyed the lucrative melon and cantaloupe harvests in the border region, and are now ruining the alfalfa, corn and oat crops.

For the Valenzuela brothers, who once profitably farmed hundreds of acres of irrigated land, the control program may be too little, too late.

“Our lives have changed rather fundamentally because of the pigs, and there is very little time left to save my business,” Arnaldo Valenzuela said.

A little over a decade ago, he said, local farmers planted 500 to 600 acres of melon and cantaloupe. He and his brother had almost 150 acres of fruit and employed 40 to 50 workers a year, plus 15 more during the packing season.

“Now there isn't even enough income to support two people,” he said forlornly.

Needless to say, the loss of those crops also drives up the prices on the produce that does get to market.

Like many others here, the (Ojinaga, Mexico) mayor believes that the hogs come and go from the U.S. side.

“They don't need passports to cross,” he said wryly. “I don't know how many there are, but it's a plague.”

Of course, the same can be said for illegal immigrants...

Seriously, there are significant problems related to both feral hogs and illegal immigrants. Please note, however, that I am most emphatically not equating immigrants to hogs, or visa versa.

Mexican officials and farmers set up a feral hog trap.

One night's harvest from the hog trap.