Pig Chicken

There are few things that I fear. Dropping my keys down a storm drain is one. Clowns including mimes. Stumbling into a beehive is another. For anti-phalactic reasons. But my greatest fear is unpredictable animal behavior and there are few as unpredictable as pigs.

My latest adventure brought me to Alligator Creek at the Port Charlotte Environmental Center. It's unstaffed presently because no one in their right mind would slog through the flooded trails and mosquito inhabited salt marshes of this park in September. But flowers bloom, mushrooms grow and you never know what you'll see unless you get out and experience it and so I did.

American Beauty berries color the palmetto scrub lands purple and while they may be tasty treats to the raccoons, the cellulose seed coverings are not easily digested and make for nice crap adornments. It's the height of the rainy season. Everything is wet. Everything is rotting and decomposing.

Vestiges of a front lawn flower garden?

From beginning to end, the trail is under 3-12 inches of water. Here I had to ford across ankle deep, tanic-acid stained water. No worries except for the occasional raft of red ants that have become swamped and now float to dry refuge.

Mosquitoes I can deal with. But this scene concerns me. Not only do pigs, (which were introduced by the Spaniards 500 years ago) create an environmental mess as they dig for grubs, they have not standard practice for fleeing which I find unacceptable. When approached, they run in any direction and on occasion straight at me. No pigs sighted yet, but I know they are here.

A snort and a "wuuuuueeeeeee" followed by crashing through the palmettos makes me stop in my tracks. There's a big pig, nearly 2.5-3 feet tall, palm-brown fur providing excellent camo. If it has tusks I'll be even more nervous.The next one is obviously a female and I spook her from her resting spot. It's hot and they lie in the mud and this one darts up and runs away - stops and then charges through the palms. I grab a rotten oak branch, look for the nearest tree to climb and wait. She stops again when I scream an obscenity and she heads in the opposite direction.

There's a year round season on pigs here and as I get to the furthest point on the loop trail I hear a gun shot. Could I have entered a park where hunting is allowed and I ignored the signs? Now I'm really nervous and feeling stupid, so I slosh loudly through the flooded trail and shout more obscenities at the pigs. They leave me alone, but it reminds me of the differences between hiking in Vermont and here in Florida. Snakes, Pigs, Bugs, Gators - there's no shortage of things to keep aware of. But that's what makes it an adventure! It turns out that hunting is off limits in the park, thus the concentration of pigs along my route. They're not stupid! Neither am I, but I am a chicken when it comes to pigs.