Wild Boar wanders into butcher shop (Germany, Dec 2010)

If wild boar could read, you can bet he would not have chosen a butcher shop to run into. But, as it happened, the boar's hour long rampage in a butcher shop in Hoehr-Grenzhausen eventually cost the boar his life.

The hunter's rifle wasn't able to stop the considerable damage to the butcher's shop, nor protect the butcher, shop clerk or lone customer from attack though.

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According to the Reuters report, the wild animal came from the nearby forest and just wandered into the butcher shop.

This report is an interesting footnote to the bigger trend (and threat) of an exploding wild boar population in Germany. And, to make matters worse, the boars are said to be radioactive, as they have been eating wild mushrooms contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, now 10 years old, but still potent.

According to an another older Reuters report from Oct 2008, the wild boars have been

Increasingly encroaching on suburban areas, boars have been reported attacking people, killing pets, and digging up corpses in cemeteries. Graveyards and gardens are being ravaged daily, police say.

The surge has also caused mounting destruction of crops and raised the risk of swine fever spreading, Sodeikat said.

According to the German Institute of Wildlife Research, the boar boom is exceptional in Germany, though it is not yet clear why.

"German litters have six to eight piglets on average, other countries usually only about four or five," the study said. *

More recently, the BBC ran a video report * saying that wild boar are increasingly seen in the streets of Berlin, where they have come searching for food. In some cases, they have found it by digging up human corpses.

In researching the background for this story however, the most unnerving reports came from Popular Science. They collected a list of encounters with wild boars:

• 7,000 wild boar estimated in Berlin: found in crowded streets, flower shop, day care


• Horde of boars broke into a hardware store in Lage, Germany


• Boars kill hunter near Berlin, Germany


• Wild Boar Storms Frankfurt Church


• Angry horde of wild boars invade German town, knocking over cyclists, biting pedestrians, causing traffic accidents and wrecking a boutique


• Student chased by wild pigs at Florida Gulf Coast University

What's next?

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* Sources:

• Reuters, US Edition, Dec 6, 2010, Wild Boar attacks German butcher but ends wurst off


• Reuters,US Edition, Oct 2, 2008, Numbers of wild boars surge in Germany


• BBC report, Berlin suffers wild boar invasion, 1 May 2011, Berlin suffers wild boar invasion


• Popular Science, Wild Boars Menace Germany, Could it Happen Here?, May 2009