‘A fully wild boar!’ TikTok user meets up with an unlikely visitor at a Florida Wawa
It’s not every day you see a wild boar at your local gas station. But in Florida, all bets are off.
TikTok user Jacob Essick, who was visiting a Wawa in Melbourne on Thursday, spotted not one, but two, of these big boys roaming around outside the popular convenience store.
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By the time Essick’s camera began rolling, one of them had disappeared.
“I saw myself — what I couldn’t believe — other than ... a fully wild boar!” Essick incredulously tells his followers on an Instagram story. “Oink, oink, oink, oink.”
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Essick did manage to get footage of one boar, brownish with white spots. The clip was captioned, “Wawa wild boar,” with a terrified face emoji.
The hefty creature appeared to be leaving the station and headed back toward some trees. The pig stops momentarily to look at the cameraman, who stops his car about a few feet away.
“Aren’t you a pretty little thing?” Essick says to the animal. “Where’s your buddy?”
No answer.
Though the sight isn’t all that unusual, wild hogs are everywhere in Florida, occurring in all 67 counties, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife.
As for their diet, the hogs were likely not attracted to the smell of Wawa’s signature made to order hoagies. They mostly eat fruits, veggies, nuts and insects.
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 12:59 PM.