RC: That was an old, old horse. He was there a lot of years.
E: He was old when Billy put him there?
RC: That was about forty years ago.
E: Really? I remember that horse. He only died a couple of
years ago. And nobody fed him nothing. He was full of
ticks when I saw him.
RC: Well, I will tell you those hogs are damn good, I thought.
The fat on the one that we killed was two inches thick.
E: I guess on the ones that you get that are feeding on the
inside [on the mainland] and not off the beach. But the one
that I got smelled just like a dead fish when I cooked it.
Maybe in the winter, too. Were the pigs always there, that
you can remember?
RC: Yes. We used to kill one around Christmastime. We would
kill one to eat and smoke it.
E: No one raised pigs on the island. If you wanted one you
went and got a pig.
RC: No. They were there years and years ago. There used to be
some down at Captiva, but they killed them all off. I do
not know why they wanted to kill them.
E: They were introduced probably by the Spanish, maybe de Soto
or Ponce de Leon. The first ones that came over here had
pigs with them. That was the way they kept their food
fresh. Were there many rattlesnakes on that island? Did
the pigs eat them? That is what the rangers told me, that
there were no rattlesnakes on the island because the pigs
ate them.
RC: No, there is nothing to that.
E: There were a lot of raccoons, though.
RC: Yes, a lot of raccoons. There were deer, also.
E: Is that right?
RC: Yes, but they killed them all off.
E: Were they small deer?
RC: Well, most of them were big deer. The last of them, I
think, swam to Pine Island, most of the big ones. You see
one swim across there now and then. Then they put some
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