But what could possibly go wrong with wild boar hunting?

The news is from a few days ago, but it is one that closes the year on a high note: in the financial manoeuvre, wild boar hunting is also authorized in urban areas, and without seasonal limits as in the countryside. It will therefore be possible throughout the year to shoot on sight the ungulates that roam in our cities; and wild rumors claim it’s even possible to pull the trigger from moving cars. Who knows, maybe even illegal parking is not allowed in order to better aim. As usual, the luckiest are those who have a terrace, a balcony or even just an external view on the street. Obviously, to avoid the Far West, whoever takes up a rifle against wild boars must first have taken training courses coordinated by the territorial police, a sort of state “shooting gallery” (hence the inclusion of the rule in the Budget: funds are foreseen) or a “voluntary Naja” as President La Russa would like to call it (“we’ll break the boars’ backs!”); and only those who have distinguished themselves in these courses by not shooting themselves in the foot or accidentally knocking down a companion will have the metropolitan hunting licence.

The icing on the cake – sorry: the juniper berry on the wild boar – is that slaughtered animals can also be eaten, subject to health checks – and I can already imagine the singer Madame making an agreement with her doctor to obtain false certifications for her ragout. In this edible drift we feel the hand of the Minister for Food Sovereignty; I don’t understand what the Minister of Tourism Santanché is waiting for to come forward on the law, to ask that tourists too be allowed to shoot wild boars: the prospect of a safari in the center of Rome would certainly have a very strong appeal. Animal rights activists are already on a war footing; but also the butchers are sharpening their blades, ready to slaughter those who dare to obtain animal proteins on their own without their intermediation.

Therefore, the metropolitan scenario that lies ahead is the following: street vendors selling guns instead of roses or umbrellas, super trendy hunting clothing, retrievers everywhere – speaking of urban decorum: let’s hope the wild boars are not replaced by hounds, terriers or dachshunds. Not to mention the hunting horn: it will become the new horn, always around the neck like the smartphones of certain exhausted people. All this in the same days in which the international health authorities have launched the myopia alarm: diopters are falling everywhere and for anyone, and by 2050, half of the world’s population is predicted to have poor vision from a distance – that is, they will be able to shoot a wild boar, moreover sure that it is a wild boar, only when the animal is already tearing them to pieces.

Are we really arming blind people? Well yes. What can go wrong? Aim, for example: you aim at the wild boar but you kill the baby in the pram next to it. But couldn’t we deploy the army to hunt these boars? We asked our soldiers to plant monuments and shopping streets, then in even more recent times to vaccinate the old ones; shooting wild animals would not have been the most humiliating mission to which we would have assigned them, quite the contrary. We citizens already do irreparable damage with a copy pencil in hand; let alone with a rifle.