An unusual visitor is creating some problems for residents of a North Arlington neighborhood. For more than a week now, a wild hog has been wandering through their streets and tearing up their lawns.
The city says it's part of a larger hog problem officials are trying to combat.
As they made their weekly rounds Friday morning, Arlington Animal Services found a 175-pound boar waiting for them inside a trap near the city landfill. It's the 14th wild hog they've caught since Oct. 7, and they said there is plenty more where that one came from.
“We’ve had the hogs here since at least 2010,” said Ray Rentschler, field operations administrator for Arlington Animal Services. “We caught 63 in 2010. Since 2012, we’ve caught about 15 to 30 each year.”
The hogs typically stay near the Trinity River and the city landfill, away from people. But when fall rolls around, they will venture out to find food.
“That’s our goal,” said Rentschler. “We want to keep them on the north side of the river before they get into our neighborhoods and River Legacy Park. So we try trapping them and being proactive.”
Arlington Animal Services has set up multiple traps near the river and the landfill that they will check and reset through March. But they say pigs are smart animals, and inevitably, a few of them will get around the traps.
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“I did a double take,” said Linda Simelaro, who lives near River Legacy Park. “I didn’t expect to see a pig in my neighborhood.”
Simelaro said a large hog has been strolling through her neighborhood every day since Halloween, tearing up her neighbor’s lawn on multiple occasions.
She said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive and will typically run away if a person gets close to it.
Still, she and her neighbors would prefer it went back from where it came.
“They’re not domesticated, so you just don’t know what they’re going to do,” said Simelaro. “I think we all will be pretty happy when they do catch it.”
One of the baited traps from Arlington Animal Services is near the neighborhood.
Rentschler said if you see a hog or find evidence of one in your neighborhood, you should call animal services immediately. He said it’s also very important that you not feed the animals.
Because feral pigs are a nuisance species, the city is required to kill all the hogs it catches. But rather than put them down, which can be a costly process, it sells them to meat processors. Hog meat is safe to eat. That money is then used to purchase new traps.
