Could it have been only one pig scaring residents of a Lithonia neighborhood? Maybe so.
But that pig won’t bother residents again.
With the help of four dogs, some hunters managed to trap the wild hog Thursday night before killing it and hauling it out of the woods. This piggy’s probably headed to a kitchen table.
“It should be good food,” Tavares Dennis, one of the hunters, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Traps were set earlier Thursday in the Stonebridge Woods subdivision. But in the end, it took old-fashioned hunting tricks and about 10 minutes to catch the pesky pig.
The leashed dogs picked up the pig’s scent and attacked it, Dennis said. Then, one of the hunters stabbed the pig.
“They just absolutely attacked him, and there was a lot of noise, a lot of screaming,” Dell Powell said.
Powell was one of many neighbors watching as the dead pig was pulled out of the woods.
“I’ve been terrorized the last couple of nights,” said Powell, who opened her backyard to the hunters. “This is a wonderful feeling.”
The pig’s death came after several days of efforts to corral as many as four animals — a number based on sightings by residents. But the hunters said they weren’t so sure there was more than one porcine nuisance.
Earlier Thursday, DeKalb County animal control turned to volunteer trappers, who tried to lure the pigs with a variety of treats.
“We do our best,” said volunteer trapper Brannan Southerland, who was in Lithonia on Thursday with a team from Northwest Exterminating. “We set it and make it as appealing as possible, and we sit back and wait now.”
Southerland and his team set out a single trip wire cage, about 8 feet long, 4 feet high, and 3 feet wide. The cage can catch multiple hogs at once, and the trappers can re-set the trip wire as many times as necessary.
Acting on the chance that there is indeed more than one hog in the ‘hood, Sutherland returned early Friday to check his trap, but found it empty.
“It doesn’t appear that we’ve had any activity around the trap since we set it yesterday,” he said. “Everything is still ready to catch a hog if it comes in, so we’re going to leave it in place and check it every 24 hours over the weekend.”
Southerland said Friday that he’s “pretty sure there’s been two different hogs identified. There’s been a lot of activity around here, so maybe once things start quieting down a little bit, the hogs will start coming back to their areas and feeding like they had been.”
Resident Tracy Ann Edwards said the only hog she has seen was smaller than the one killed on Thursday, so she’s pretty certain there’s more swine to be captured or killed.
“It’s kind of scary,” said Edwards, who has a six-year-old son. “I don’t want him out here right now.”
—Photographer John Spink and staff writers Chelsea Cariker and Mike Morris contributed to this report.
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