A Sanctioned Betrayal
Texas allows hunters to kill wild hogs year-round without limits, or capture them alive to take to slaughterhouses to be processed and sold to restaurants as exotic meat. Thousands more are shot from helicopters.
—Smithsonian Magazine, 2011
On ranches they tell you to watch out
for the hogs—
Damn smart. Smarter’n a dog.
Known to scope out traps,
send a scout alone
to test an area before traveling
into new terrain.
Ranchers don’t like hogs.
Hogs spread weeds and disease.
They will charge a grown man
with five-inch tusks, stick
a new bone in his thigh.
Once on a fishing trip with my father,
I saw two hogs. The older one
quietly grunted as she rooted
through the cattails.
I remember thinking, My god
that’s an old sow. Half an ear
and red as Texas clay. She was born
straight from the mud.
Judas Pig—such a heavy name
that calls into question
the nature of allusion
and whether any old thing
can lift its heel,
outfitted as it was with a tracking collar,
entrusted to act
as animals do.
Above, helicopter wings:
chop-chop chop-chop
A Chevy rusts.
Bluebonnets will grow
come spring. She’s home now,
real prodigal pig or something.
The field was called Akeldama.