GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Mary fed the pigs that visited near her home last month. Mary and her husband, Miles, have spent more than $12,500 to tend to 17 wild porkers.

Feral friends

17 wild pigs dine in style, thanks
to a Pearl City couple

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By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com

In a suburban neighborhood of well-manicured lawns, a Pearl City couple has spent more than $12,500 tending to 17 wild pigs that scramble up the mountainside to dine nightly in their back yard.

The pigs eat from $900 custom-made stainless steel troughs bolted to a concrete pad specially built for them. They feed on $250 worth of cat food a month, fresh fruit and leftover bread and rice.

Mary and Miles, who asked their last name not be revealed for fear pig hunters would stake out their home, find the porkers intelligent and fascinating to watch.

"They're just wonderful," said Mary. "The way they look at us, they understand that we're trying to help them. But that might just be my imagination."

The feral pigs inhabit the gulches and mountains behind their house, which sits along a ridge, and were probably attracted to food Mary would leave out for cats.

Meanwhile, government agencies and conservation groups are trying to eradicate wild pigs and discourage feeding the animals.

"Pigs are the enemy of the native ecosystems," said Jeff Mikulina, director of the Hawaii chapter of the Sierra Club.

By rooting around, they create a welcome habitat for invasive plants and a breeding ground for mosquitoes, spreading avian malaria, which has wiped out much of the native forest birds, Mikulina said.

Though rare, feral pigs have been known to charge humans, but usually bolt at the smell or sight of people, said Oahu district wildlife manager David Smith with the Department of Land & Natural Resources.

Smith discourages feeding wildlife because it creates a dependency on humans, and the animals usually become a nuisance.

The state has received complaints from Tantalus, Manoa, Nuuanu and Pearl City, where forest reserves abut residential areas.

"They (pigs) are very efficient at roto-tilling with their snouts," Smith said.

Mary and Miles' back lawn had been destroyed by the pigs, so they spent about $7,000 to put up a chain-link fence; reinforce the area beyond the yard with gravel, dirt and metal corrugation; and build a concrete pad.

Miles, a former hunter, has turned over a new leaf and does not mind the expense. "Time to give back to nature," he said.

The couple has a veritable farmyard of animals, including about 25 feral chickens, 20 feral cats and two indoor dogs.

Mary hand-fed the first visitors who came about a year and a half ago -- a mother she named Miss Piggy and piglets Porky and Petunia -- but no longer.

"We don't try to make them tame," Mary said, for fear they may lose their apprehension of hunters and "get whacked."

One recent evening, four porcine adolescents with ridges of black bristles on their backs appeared just before sundown in the couple's back yard. The little herd was skittish and scurried down the steep hillside as a photographer got near. But they returned to pig out when Mary filled the trough with cat food and fresh bananas.

Two more appeared, including a gray-muzzled boar with a broken tusk called "Old Guy" by Mary. The pigs squealed when they got into a little tussle, but soon quieted down.

The area is immaculate and lacks the usual pigpen smell since the pigs do not defecate in the area.

As to why she feeds them, Mary explained, "Whether it's chickens or pigs, I wouldn't let anybody starve."

Some of the pigs are on the lean side with their spareribs showing, while others weigh about 200 pounds.

Mary hopes "to increase awareness that pigs aren't just vermin."

Some neighbors feel similarly about the pigs.

"They no come in (my) yard," said Teru Shimote, a neighbor two houses below, who was aware they were feeding the pigs. "They wanna take care, good. I don't have trouble. They take care very good."

However, another neighbor complained the animals dug up ti plants and banana trees he planted on an easement behind his house, leaving bare dirt prone to erosion.

But after learning his neighbors were feeding the pigs, he said it explained why the hogs were no longer digging up his back yard.

Mary hopes to find a way to control the feral pig population, possibly capturing and sterilizing them as she does with the feral cats. "But I have no idea how," she said.