A succession of mild winters has, according to Fox News, left Germany scrambling to deal with a skyrocketing wild boar population (right, not exactly as shown). Tales of swarming beasts rampaging through city streets and attacking citizens occur with alarming regularity.
And just imagine the E. coli O157:H7 these mutant boars are spreading throughout the country.
The problem has been aggravated by the lingering effects of the Chernobyl disaster from twenty-five years ago; a large portion of the wild animals are contaminated by radioactivity.
Poisonous radiation leaves the beasts completely inedible (wild boar is considered a delicacy in Germany), and the phenomenon is becoming expensive for the German government. In the last hunting season, 650,000 boar were shot versus 287,000 in the previous year. And due to atomic energy regulations, the government must buy contaminated animals from hunters who catch them.