Ben Brown
A snorting noise coming from across Joshua's Creek was what initially drew Slobodanka Humle's attention while she was out on her regular running route near midday October 17.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a dark pig-like shape about 40 feet away, darting away from a pile of fallen apples where it had apparently been feasting.
"I froze," Humle recalls. She watched the creature run off in her same direction of travel on the footpath opposite the creek.
"Then I kept on running, thinking: I got to get off this trail!" Fortunately she was only a few minutes jog to Lakeshore Road where the trail passes the waste water treatment plant.
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As a new resident of the town, she was unsure if wild boars were even possible in these parts. When she got home, she took to social media to ask neighbours.
"So many people said it was probably a coyote or a fox, but I’ve come across all of those and they’re very slinky," Humle says. "They don’t just barge through the forest."
The 52-year-old mother and retired pharmacist grew up on Vancouver Island and has had enough encounters with wildlife, to stick with her initial assessment that she saw a pig: "It was the size of a boar, I heard it and it was making a snorting sound." She says she has heard the sounds bears make, and this was not the same.
"I'm not a city girl!" she laughs.
Another resident of Oakville who declined to be named, shared footage from her front door camera showing what she felt looked like a wild pig:
Ontario Invading Species Awareness Program
Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters Wild Pig Fact Sheet
