In 2011, the Texas Legislature passed an awesome law allowing people to shoot feral hogs from helicopters, which was both the first and last time that feral hogs (to say nothing of the bill's sponsor, current Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller) produced anything good. Otherwise, the creatures are a scourge upon nature and humanity.

The evidence:



According to the Texas Department of Agriculture, feral hogs "wreak havoc on property, livestock, crops, and pastures across the state," to the tune of $500 million per year. Thanks to a lack of natural predators, their numbers — and the havoc they wreak — are likely to grow.

Feral hogs have been known to dine on endangered and threatened species such as sea turtles and red-cheeked salamanders, which isn't an issue locally but serves to highlight that these creatures have no consciences.

Feral hogs once inspired Dallas City Hall to pay gun-toting yahoo Osvaldo Rojas good taxpayer money to eradicate the city's hog problem, which didn't work.

Feral hogs are documented cannibals.

Feral hogs are filthy reservoirs of pestilence.



But wait! Feral hogs are even more awful than than that. We learned today that feral hogs are also punk-ass snitches who just led state law enforcement officials straight to a $6 million marijuana farm 70 miles northeast of Dallas.

According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, hunters at Cooper Wildlife Management Area, a 15,000-acre spread a bit north of Sulphur Springs, were tracking hogs when they "stumbled upon a sophisticated marijuana growing encampment having more than 6,500 mature plants with a street value estimated at more than $6 million."

The outpost was equipped with tents, farming tools, fertilizer, a generator and irrigation pumps. The crop, TPWD presumes, would have been harvested and taken to market before the start of archery season on October 1. Instead, officials excavated a pit and burned all 6,500 marijuana plants, leaving North Texas a few thousand pounds of weed poorer.

And what of the hogs? TPWD didn't specify their fate. Presumably they cut a deal and, in exchange for not being turned into sausage, are now working as confidential informants, because that's how feral hogs roll.

