Feral You, Feral Me

essay

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Many years ago, I traveled to Austin to perform my poetry. Three hours after my arrival, my kind host was driving me down a dirt road. I’d always thought of Texas as being a vast prairie punctuated by oil derricks, but we traveled through a forest of trees that were strangers to me. It was a thin forest—unlike the pine forests of my childhood that could disappear the sun—but a thin forest is still a forest.

Since I’m Native American, my white literary hosts have often tried to show me the most Indian thing in their vicinity. And since Natives are consciously and subconsciously perceived as being as wild as eagles and dandelions, I’m sometimes shown the local wilderness, however wild or not wild it might be. It’s the geographical version of “I had an Indian friend in high school.” I suppose, in some people’s playbooks, that kind of genial whiteness would count as a “microaggression,” but I think it’s sweet. It reminds me of the white people who wear turquoise earrings to my performances. I think it’s just a pretty blue stone but I know those white fans are putting on a small and silly performance of affection for Indians.

As we drove through the forest, and as my well-read host alternated observations about the Texas flora with opinions about American literature, we drove past a cage-trap where three squealing baby pigs and their mother were trapped behind the wire. Outside the cage, five of her other babies were squealing and running in panicked circles.

“Damn,” I said. “That’s intense.”

“Yeah,” my host said. “We got a wild hog problem. We gotta catch and kill.”

My human heart reflexively ached for those helpless animal youngsters and their equally helpless mother. I think most humans have brief flashes of veganism. But I also went to a high school in a farm/ranch town where my white best friend’s family were pig farmers. I’d been in those barns. And I also grew up on a reservation where I often ate the meat that once belonged to the many deer that I’d seen strapped to the hoods of my cousins’ trucks. So please give me that pork shredded and that venison stewed. I’m a committed omnivore.

And yet, I still felt distressed about those captured hogs. Is that hypocritical? I think it is. But I also believe that plants possess some degree of consciousness. Roots do indeed communicate with other roots. I think a carrot feels something when it’s torn from the earth. So maybe I’m an empathetic omnivore—that greatest of culinary oxymorons.

But I also joke that vegans and vegetarians will only follow their diets until they get hungry enough. All the vegans and vegetarians stranded on desert islands with Tom Hanks and I would eventually be spearing and frying the crabs and fish.

So, yeah, I’m an empathetic omnivore who is sometimes a sarcastic asshole.

In any case, I’ve since learned that wild hogs cause billions of dollars worth of damage in Texas and other parts of the United States. Wild hogs are an invasive, ferocious, and intelligent species that destroy indigenous flora and fauna. Wild hogs are colonizers.

I did some Internet research and learned that a bounty hunter can kill dozens of wild hogs in one day and make no significant difference. It’s a losing battle. There are people whose entire job is about killing wild hogs and it’s a career that offers endless opportunities.

You’ve heard of the better mouse trap? Well, there are better hog traps now. If you have the stomach for it then check out a company called BoarBusters. A hunter can see, set, reset, and spring their traps using mobile phones.

Here’s the thing: I often think about those trapped wild hogs I saw in Texas. I don’t even remember my host’s name but I vividly remember the terrified squealing of those babies.

And I vividly remember when my host and I made the return ride past that cage. The trapped mother and three babies weren’t screeching anymore. Instead, they were breathing hard as they ran around the cage trying to find an escape.

The five untrapped babies were nowhere in sight. Those little hogs had been given three choices: fight, freeze, or flight. They chose to run.

“I wonder what’s gonna happen to them?” I asked, referring to both the captive and escaped hogs.

My host and I both knew that was a rhetorical question.

I don’t remember much of my performance from that night. I think I read in the living room of an old house that had become a literary center. My short and long term memory have been damaged by my brain surgery in 2015. And my bipolar manias and depressions have also compromised my recall.

But those trapped wild hogs stay with me. Those doomed hogs are now a part of my autobiography. In remembering them, I feel civilized and primal in equal measure. I believe their deaths were necessary for objective and subjective reasons. But I also feel like a cruel bastard for believing that. And I wonder what my warrior and hunter ancestors would think of the conflicted and contradictory Indian that I’ve become.

Those sparrows
used to be dinosaurs.

Our seven-pound lapdog
used to be a wolf.

We Indians used to throw spears
at mammoths.

I don’t want to be nostalgic
but I understand

that almost everything
used to be stronger.