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The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp
The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp
by Steve Washam based on a telling by George Gordon
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Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions-- especially his traps--and drove south. Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
It was a Saturday morning--a lazy day--when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town’s local citizens.
The traveler spoke, "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?"
Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy.
"You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.
"I am. I’m from North Dakota," said the stranger.
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"In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old man explained. "A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!" He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp."
Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!"
"Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They’re wild and they’re dangerous. You can’t trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself."
Every man nodded his head in agreement.
The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?"
They said, "Well, yeah, it’s due south--straight down the road." But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he’d meet a terrible fate.
He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the wagon."
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