I am not entirely sure this is legal. However, we did not live in city limits and did not hurt anyone or anything.
If you don't already know, my family tends to be a little on the "wild, free, and pure of heart" side of life. Which is part of the reason we belong outside of city limits.
When I was a little girl I was a bit different than the rest of my family or you could say I had "bigger feelings" which was confusing to the rest of the crew. I loved organization, I was a little more tender, and was a little nurturer. I loved to have something to tend to and be the care taker, especially babies.
Side note: when my brother came along, I thought it was so kind of my mom to bring me a real-life baby home. Greatest gift. I was convinced he was mine. So much so that my mom had to run to the Dollar General and get me a small boy baby with a stroller and crib. She told me this was now my baby and to leave her baby alone. It worked....kind of.
At school one of the classes had a classroom pet; a hamster and I decided that is what I really needed. I asked my mom and she said absolutely not. Why? Because they bite and smell bad....now, you need to remember this response: they bite and smell bad.
A week or so later my dad and uncle came home from the ranch with TWO BABY WILD HOGS! They caught them feeding cattle at the Cooper or Lazy E outside of Jacksboro. I was thrilled. I raised them on bottle.
Let's step outside. Please remember why I could not have a hamster; they bite and stink. In case you are unfamiliar with wild pigs, they also are able to bite and they in fact stink.
Back inside. I loved those pigs and bottle fed them, kept them in a stall at the barn until they are comfortable enough to follow me around. My attention span with my new pets had reach its max after a couple weeks, I got bored and we ended up putting them on a cowdog that had a litter of puppies. She took over as the food source for a bit.
I am not sure what happened to one of them, but Sport survived and grew into quite a large Boar (male) pig. He was HUGE, had tusks, and fully looked the the part of a 'wild boar pig'. Looking back on it, we (my siblings and I) thought it was totally normal to have a boar pig hanging out around the house, in the pasture with our cows, he would come up to feed, and he LOVED when people would visit - a real people pig.
My mom helped with pre-school class at our church growing up and Mrs. Brenda was the leader and THE BEST. We had so much fun with Mrs. Brenda. Well, Mrs. Brenda was going to be kind enough to bring everything over to mom's house to prepare the lessons for the next few weeks.
As Mrs. Brenda turned off our dirt road and pulled into the driveway, Sport was thrilled. He jumped up from his shady spot and quickly trotted all 200 lbs of himself over to her car, back-end wagging as he got closer to driver-side door. He could not wait to welcome her to our home.
Mrs. Brenda however, was not as thrilled. Fear came over her face, horn honking, I believe there may have been some screaming. From her viewpoint there was a massive wild boar hog charging her car and going to eat her for an afternoon snack.
Mom quickly intervened and calmed the situation....I mean Sport did have a collar on.
But the best part, Sport could pen cows like a dog. Dad had a few traps behind the house that all funneled to an alley where cattle buyers could load trucks. People would come to back their rig up to the loading chute and Sport would trot out there, grunting to tell the cows it was time to get together and load up. He pushed them all the way up the alley and into the trailer. The look on some of those men's faces, if we had cell phones then I am sure someone they would have them out recording.
I laugh mostly because this was so much of our childhood; things we thought were normal, that when I moved to college I realized were not and most people had hamsters for pets, not wild hogs.