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BERLIN -- Gabriele Klose simply couldn't let the hunter kill the wild boar running around her flower store. Not after it looked up at her with big, innocent eyes.

The hairy beast was one of thousands of wild boars that have discovered the charms of urban living in Germany's leafy capital city. When the creature trotted out of rush-hour traffic one morning last month to root around the flower store, Ms. Klose's first thought was: "That is one ugly dog."

After a second glance, Ms. Klose phoned the police for safety -- and a local tabloid for publicity. The police called in Matthias Eggert, one of a crack band of hunters with license to kill hogs in urban areas. But Mr. Eggert's plan to dispatch the boar appalled Ms. Klose. The hunter says the tabloid reporter brandished a camera and warned him he'd have the whole of Berlin on his case if he pulled the trigger. Mr. Eggert sensed a PR debacle, so he phoned around until he found an animal sanctuary 40 miles from Berlin that granted the boar asylum and named the swine "Amanda."

Mr. Eggert, a 55-year-old forestry official, fumes at Berlin's "vegans and whatnot" who are, he thinks, too sentimental about the city's pesky boars. "If we don't get brutally pragmatic, the problem is going to get totally out of hand," he says. Berlin's wooded parks, suburbs and increasingly mild winters make it Europe's capital city for sus scrofa, the wild, tusked ancestor of the domestic pig. The booming population of porkers has Germans on the run, reversing the natural order of things.