Feral hogs invade West Georgetown

GEORGETOWN, Texas (KXAN) - Janice Jones says she's seen many large feral hogs up close and they're bigger than she imagined.

"They're about that big -- the big ones -- and they have big tusks," said Jones motioning to her waist height. "I have a friend that lives on the east side of town and she's said out in the open field they've seen 250 of them at a time."

Jones said she and some of her neighbors have had their yards torn up several times this year.

"We've had our lawn taken up a couple of times," added Jones. "A neighbor across the street had hers entirely [torn] up. It looked as if a bulldozer had gone through and just lifted up the entire grass mat."

The River Ridge neighborhood is one of three that have reported damage caused by feral hogs. Police say these animals have been crawling up the San Gabriel River banks and onto people yards looking for food or plants to eat.

The problem is so bad, a neighbor set a large hog trap behind his home near the river bank. Jerry Mullins has been living in this neighborhood for 15 years and says he's had close run-ins with the hogs.

"It's not affected my yard but it's been within a few houses from my house," said Mullins, admitting he's lucky hogs haven't gotten to his yard, "and several other houses in the neighborhood  have been severely impacted."

For now Jones and her neighbors have stopped making extra efforts to beautify their yards and hope there will be a solution before spring blooms again.