Europa the wild boar

 

Since I have arrived in Ispra and started working full-time, my learning curve has been in exponential rise, so much so that I sometimes wonder whether it will take off and end up somewhere on a cloud, where it will be infinitely beautiful but also extremely useless. 

Among the many things I have learnt already, some came to me in unconventional ways, and those are the ones that I will report to you in this short story. 

We all have many misconceptions in life, about ourselves, about others, and among others, about..wild boars. Wild boars are culturally internalized as defensive, somewhat aggressive, and strong animals, to best be avoided and, at worst, ran away from at full speed. Many are the reported attacks and killings of farmers in different part of Italy by the trotter of a wild boar and too much has been written and recorded about wildboars' impressive fighting skills, expecially when as army they unite against humans agglomerations. I truly hope that after reading this, you will be convinced that reality is much different than what we have grown up to know: wildboars are ingenious, cautious and definetely not keen to fight. To give you a bit of background, you should know that Ispra is a little town on the coast of the Lake Maggiore, with only one traffic light, but an Eiffel tower (the second in Europe after the french one). The town is so tiny that it is almost negligible on the map, if it wasn't for an important research centre for humans, which name will not be mentioned in respect of privacy, and a smaller and wilder research centre for wild boars, the famous Joint Center for Wild Boar Research (JCWBR). Both insitutions were born at the outskirts of this green town for different but convenient reasons, again not much can be publicly revealed about the human research centre, whereas a lot is know about the JCWBR. The JCWBR centre was born to predict, assess and reduce risks caused by the passing of cargo train on the only railway that runs through the town, where the scale of the railway, of the town, of the surrounding forest and of the Ispra endemic wild boar researcher population resulted in too good of a costellation for the centre not to be established.

Thus, since the very beginning, nobody really discussed the need of such institution, also considering that many wild boars had been killed by the fast passing train that cut the forest corridor in half. 

Historically, since its foundation, the JCWBR did indeed provide important findings that were successfully implemented through smart and aimed policy making. Wild boars quite rapidly became able to record vibrations change in the soil and to consequently predict the time of the train passing with high precision and accuracy and, wild boars green-passing timetables were updated regularly. Although outside of initial interest, research was also conducted on train speed fluctuations, and seasonal and daily patterns in relation to the number and color of wagons were also analized and reported. When the pandemic hit and train service was stopped even through the town of Ispra, it took some time for the wild boars to adjust to the new normal, too. Some wild boars were skeptical and kept following prevention measured even when no train had been seen passing for months. Research was suddenly stagnant and many workplaces were cut down, not with little complaints of the workers. What were they to do? How were they to provide food to their littles, if no financial assistance was guaranteed by the employer? In this occasion, the railroad and the train station became a favorite demonstration place. Some pictures from reliable sources even report having seen wild boars protesting nearby residence areas of Ispra, less trustworthy is the reported spotting of wild boars wearing yellow vests in the center of Paris. 

When things change, adaptation is the best thing to do and we, humans, have much to learn from wild boars in this sense. In fact, in the middle of this unpredicted chaos, a group of small young researchers, led by the brilliant mind of Europa the wild boar, decided that it was time to take research to the next level, to start anew and put the energies in some other project. It is so that they decided to study how to prevent, assess and reduce the psychological and physical risk caused by meeting of humans, in a time when no train and no cars seemed to be circulating. This research project was visibly more hardous than the previous one and no results were expected to be produced in years. Patience was the only guiding light for the team, until, one day, Europa herself decided to go on a creativity enhancing stroll a Wednesday evening. It had been the first rainy and cold day of the season, so no animals were out except the orange slimy snails that were trying to reach the other side of the forest path before the dark. 

All of a sudden, a loud breathing human, panting and rushing crossed Europa's path. AAA! They both screamed and, scared from brain to toes, they went separate ways as fast as thunders above their heads. Reached home that night, Europa could not sleep, not because of the adrenaline rush the encounter had given her, but rather because she had had the creative impulse she was looking for: why had the two long-standing research centers never collaborated? Why could the wild boars not communicate directly with the humans to understand their respective behaviors and prevent conflicts? What if the humans could tell them more about the train that had been the objective of their research for so long? That could help them greatly, and they would be willing to share their knowledge too. 

The spirit of Europa was so filled of her dream that in the next years she was able to actually establish the very first human-animal research collaboration, where help and dialogue allowed for repurposing of energy, creating job positions that were lost during the pandemic, and guaranteeing the right balance between learning and appreciating what had already been learnt by themselves and others, because an individual infinite learning curve that touches the clouds is useless as much as invisible.