“How dare you speak against the authority of the church or practice any religion but mine. That’s heresy! You will be tortured until you confess your sin. You might escape execution if you are willing to implicate others in your conspiracy against God. If you insist upon your innocence, the only result can be execution. We already know you’re guilty, that’s why you are here.” That’s both events in a nutshell.
Call me Winnie-the-Pooh!
A guy tried to rob me at gunpoint in 2016. I had a canister of 18% pepper spray on my key chain. He wanted me to go into my own pockets to give him what he wanted, mistake on his part. When he looked over his shoulder I sprayed him. If I had been carrying a gun, I might have hesitated to use it because of the finality of it. Hesitation could have gotten me killed. No sane human wants to kill other humans. Because pepper spray is nonlethal, I didn’t hesitate. Yet, some states like Michigan forbid stun guns and pepper spray over 2% concentration, while handing out firearms like candy on Halloween.
Not as mean as the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials. Those are just a couple of small examples of what religious freaks do when no one stops them.
I think people tend to see what benefits their desires. Domestic dogs kill far more humans and pets per year than boars, yet no one is advocating going out and shooting dogs on sight. We aren’t interested in their meat. Cats are an invasive species in many places where humans have introduced them and cats have hunted many native bird species to extinction, yet no one is saying we should kill all the kitties. Boars are very intelligent, smarter than dogs and wolves. They can smell yams, potatoes and truffles three feet under the ground. They can also smell gun oil, gun powder, and dogs. They know when you’re in the woods to hunt them. Here in Japan, the absence of boars kills forests. Many tubers here are also climbing vines that choke and kill trees. When humans stop living in the forest and there are no boars, the vines take over and the trees die. Humans living in harmony with nature will cut vines away from food producing trees. Boars dig up tubers and sometimes the tree roots get damaged, but if the boar did nothing, the tree would be killed in a few years anyway. I cut vines off of trees when I walk the forests near me. I prioritize saving cherry, plum and walnut trees but I rescue as many trees as I have time for. The boars are a big help.
I’m sure they do. I bet domestic dogs kill a lot more people and pets per year though.
I don’t feed them specifically or directly. I have trail cameras in the forest and I leave my kitchen scraps in front of the cameras. The boars get it sometimes but usually the tanuki (Nyctereutes viverrinus) get to it first. The two times I got close enough to touch boars were both surprise encounters. First time I was cleaning up trash under a bridge and the boar was eating mulberries off the ground. The noise from the cars on the bridge kept him from hearing me and he must have been upwind because he didn’t smell me either. I was looking down to pick up trash while walking. Something big jumped up and ran away from me. I jumped too. I looked and saw a boar’s ass running. He turned around and came back toward me. I showed him my palms, talked calmly and backed away slowly as he got too close. I figured out that I meant him no harm and then moved about 100 feet away and went back to eating. I kept picking up garbage. We could see each other but respected each others space. The second time I was feeding bread to ducks with my daughter and she had her shoes off to soak her feet in the river. She was sitting on a rock. A boar burst out of the underbrush next to her and came up and stole her shoe. He ran upriver with it, dropped it and came back to us. He started eating the bread I was trying to feed to the ducks. I just dropped all the bread on the ground and my daughter and I backed away from him. He seemed like he wanted to play, but I wasn’t going to risk him getting aggressive or over-familiarizing him with humans and putting him in danger. I’m not sure if it was the same boar both times or two different boars.
I concede that feral pigs and feral dogs can be much more dangerous than their unaltered natural counterparts boars and wolves. Here is a video from one of my trail cameras of a Japanese boar mama and her babies. I have never met any females with babies in the woods. I have only met male boars that were by themselves. I always announce my presence by repeating a little chant while I walk. It lets the animals know I’m coming and that I’m not trying to hunt them. If they don’t want me to see them, they have plenty of time to get away. If an animal runs into me, I don’t want the animal to be surprised. That’s the worst possible meeting. https://spectra.video/w/n8XJxxYPK9pJqBcjAuQxQV
You would be vicious too if someone was hunting you with dogs and a rifle. I have encountered several wild boars in Japan and gotten close enough to touch them. Try giving them snacks like you would a cute kitty and see if they don’t respond just like a cute kitty does. They mirror our behavior.
Leave the poor piggies alone. I have wild boars near me in Japan and twice in the past year I’ve been close enough to touch them. They are highly intelligent social animals. If you demonstrate that you aren’t a threat, they are indifferent to your presence and if you offer them an apple, potato, corn, bread or peanuts they will warm up to you like a cat when you give it food. The problem isn’t the boars, it’s that people act aggressively toward them and they respond with aggression.
They are both cool, but I’m originally from Michigan, so I gotta go with Eminem.
The NRA does not exist to uphold citizens rights; it exists to lobby for laws to keep gun manufacturers swimming in piles and piles of money without any liability for the harm their products cause. They serve the oligarchy by default.