Q&A: Wild Boars
Wild Boars
Question
I live in Haifa, and wild boars sometimes visit the garden looking for food/water and leave behind overturned soil. When I make noise they sometimes get startled and leave the garden, but sometimes they move on to another garden. A neighbor (self-righteous and sanctimonious) who saw me chasing them away claimed that I’m not allowed to, because I’m supposedly sending them into the public domain and into the neighbors’ gardens, and since the boar is currently at my place, I’m the one who got stuck with it and I have to absorb the unpleasantness and the damage and keep quiet, and there’s nothing I can do.
Answer
What? Of course not. If you drive them away, that is entirely your right. Of course you may not send them specifically to him. But if you chase them off and they choose his yard, then he is supposed to protect it.
Discussion on Answer
With Heaven’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “as the ox licks up the grass of the field,” 5781
For Nishmat Shabbat — greetings,
For you to make noise and drive away the boars is not a simple matter morally, for this disturbs the tranquility of the boar, who is acting in good faith, and after all we were commanded not to cause suffering to animals.
However, there is no problem at all with raising a fearsome dog in your yard that will bark at the boars with all its might, since you are not obligated to intervene in disputes between animals. And if the boar is frightened by the terror of the dog—that’s its own problem.
With blessings, Miklosh Kalish
Isn’t there a law here analogous to setting up an ownerless pig in your fellow’s standing grain?