Wild hogs becoming major nuisance, desecrating cemetery
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DALLAS (KTVT) — There are overturned headstones and grave markers completely covered with dirt at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Southeast Dallas.
Wild hogs are causing the damage.
It’s a sight that’s tough for anyone to see.
But especially to Dwayne Ford and others who have loved ones buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery and consider it sacred ground.
“We come on birthdays holidays sometimes we come just to come,” said Ford. “We always come and change flowers.”
“Out of the five years I’ve been here, I ain’t never seen it like this,” said Thomas Else, the groundskeeper at the cemetery.
Else has spent most of his days recently cleaning up the mess after the hogs forage for worms in the dirt.
“I’ve seen a bunch of them running in packs going from one side to another side,” he said.
The cemetery has resorted to hiring hog trappers who were out Monday, April 26, setting up cages hoping to keep the damage from spreading.
“It makes me kind of mad because if it was my family I would be wanting something done,” said Coy Hirth of Slappy’s Hog Trapping.
Hirth says the location of the cemetery makes it an easy target for the hogs.
“You’re right here by the Trinity River. That’s their highway.”
Experts say the animals will not dig deep enough to disturb any buried caskets.
Still, Ford and his sister know and worry that any day they could find their mother’s grave looking like those that have already been desecrated.
“The way it’s looking they are headed that way yes probably not only this area but all over,” said Ford. “The way the hogs are rooting up the food destroying all the headstones I think it’s just terrible.”
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